Link parser broken (again?)

[Chuckles the Clone]

Both links in the following post lead to 404s because the anchor has been constructed
to include the trailing period in the sentence.

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/461125#3130056

I remember this happening way back at the beginning of the new site but
haven't encountered it in a while. If I'm just re-pointing-out the same old
bug, apologies. If not, it seems to be happening again ...

Here's the bug in action:
This link http://www.chow.com/blogs will work because it is not followed by a period,
but this identical link will not: http://www.chow.com/blogs.

Safari 3.0, os x.

[Engineering]

This is not a bug in general. A period is a valid path component and therefore points to a separate resource than the URL without the period.

In the example of your post, the parsing could be a little smarter, but the quickest fix for you would be to not put the period you intend to finish the sentence flush with the URL you want linked.

[Chuckles the Clone]

>> This is not a bug in general.

No argument there. But the view here from the user perspective is that it's
harder to have to remember to never put a URL at the end of a sentence
than it would be to deal with the vanishingly small number of links that end
in a period.

It's not terribly elegant, but if the rule was, "if you need to end a URL with a period, you
have to use two", rather than, "never end a sentence with a URL", then the right
thing would happen 99% of the time.