I don't have a use case for this but I was recently asked this very question and w3schools helpfully tells you the characters are ignored but not why.

Anyone have any idea why this might be the case?

Thanks, David

I don't have a use case for this but I was recently asked this very question and w3schools helpfully tells you the characters are ignored but not why.

Anyone have any idea why this might be the case?

Thanks, David

• javascript
• escaping

2 Answers 2

The escape function is deprecated. Use encodeURI and encodeURIComponent instead.

From your source: "The escape() function encodes a string, so it can be read on all puters." Those characters are standard in the ASCII set, so there's no point in encoding them for this particular purpose.