Ask HN: Are unicode symbols allowed in domain names?

1 pointshade232 comments

A search of web whatsapp on google yields : https://web.whatsapp.com//en. I wonder if these symbols can be part of the Rest API / Domain name?

View on HN

Punycode-encoded Unicode characters can be rendered correctly, depending on whether the TLD in question allows them. Not all TLDs allow punycode, and even those that do limit the allowed codepoints for security reasons.

This should get you started:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack

http://[poop emoji].la (HN seems to filter it out)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com