If an URL starts with a slash, it's supposed to be an absolute URL, using the same domain as your reference domain.

That aside, I would think of just concatenate the string, and turn double (or triple) slashes into single ones. The only problem with that approach is that the double slash at the start, right after the colon, should stay. so a plain 

  tr[/][]s

[download]
will not do.

This will work: 

(my $url = "$string1/$string2") 
  =~ s((://)|//+){ $1 || "/" }ge;

[download]
After that, the resulting string will be in $url. It will not be the return value of the entire expression, don't make the mastake of returning it directly in a function.

n.b. I'm inserting a slash myself, in case neither of the two strings contained a slash at their appropriate end.

In reply to Re: Detecting whether forward slash is present in string by bart
in thread Detecting whether forward slash is present in string by philuk86zen

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