Difference between URL and URI? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
What's the difference between a URI and a URL?

Just to get it right:

URI = Tells you in which hotel you should go to sleep.

URL = Tells you in which room in what hotel you should go to sleep.

So URL is a lot more specific, it points to a final destination. The thing you want. While URI is something strange.

So what exactly is URI when it's not an URL? What's the real difference?

Answer 1

URI: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network (typically the World Wide Web) using specific protocols

URL: In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a subset of the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it.

Example

To identify a specific resource and how to access it - in all completeness

URI: mysql://localhost@databasename:password 

The URL shows you where you can find the database on the internet and which protocol you should use.

URL: mysql://localhost 

Answer 2

"URI stands for Universal Resource Identifier and URL stands for Universal Resource Locator. Often times people use the terms interchangably, which is not entirely correct. A URL is a subset of the URI popular protocols. These are protocols (http://, ftp://, mailto:). Therefore all URLs are URIs. The term URL is deprecated and the more correct term URI is used in technical documentation. All URIs are means to access a resource on the Internet and are a a technical short hand used to link to the resource. URIs always designate a method to access the resource and designate the specific resource to be accessed."- Source