Entering complex URLs in Markdown syntax?

Question

Is the problem me, or Stack Overflow?

If I post a comment or question with this named link, some text, and then an inline link the preview will show correctly but the actual result is strange. All of the text from the start of the first link up to and including the text of the second link is linked to the first destination.

For example:

[strfriend](http://strfriend.com/) is *your* friend:

<http://strfriend.com/vis?re=%28Zip%3A%5cs%2a%5cd%5cd%5cd%5cd%5cd%29%5cs%2a%28State%3A%5cs%2a%5cw%5cw%29&gt;

Results in:

strfriend is your friend:

http://strfriend.com/vis?re=%28Zip%3A%5cs%2a%5cd%5cd%5cd%5cd%5cd%29%5cs%2a%28State%3A%5cs%2a%5cw%5cw%29

Notice how the entire first line is linked, and how the second link actually points to the destination of the first.

Related:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/217533/links-to-urls-containing-parentheses

Answer 1

Updated in light of comment:

[strfriend][1] is *your* friend

  [1]: http://strfriend.com/

Results in:

strfriend is your friend

Answer 2

Escape the parens. Parens are pretty toxic in URLs.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001181.html

It's even worse: those strfriend URLs in the form of

http://strfriend.com/vis?re=(Zip%3A\s*\d\d\d\d\d)\s*(State%3A\s*\w\w)

...are really painful. You'll have to encode almost everything in it. See my edit. Works now, but not worth it IMO.

str friend? more like str ENEMY.