url not working in footnotes - seems to require escape characters, but

Question

I use \url which does not require to escape characters in an URL to make them acceptable for latex (specifically LuaLaTex). However when the same reference is included in a footnote, characters (especially _ and % seem to required escaping. Am I missing somehting?

Here a MWE:

\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{url}

\begin{document} 

Phoenizisch \url{https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicodeblock_Ph%C3%B6nizisch}
    and more text
    with the same ref in a footnote%
 \footnote{some text with the same url
          \url{{https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicodeblock_Ph%C3%B6nizisch}}
        and a closing text.}%
    . After the footnote 

\end{document}

which does not compile with the error

File ended while scanning use of \@footnotetext.

It does, of course, compile and produce output as expected if the offending url in the footnote is removed. Note that the same url in the body is processed correctly. I assume that there is an interaction between \footnote and \url.

What is the best solution or workaround?

Have you tried \protect\url otherwise see the manual for the url package, the url command is fragile (afair) — daleif, Jun 14 '19 at 18:06
\url changes the category-code-régime (beneath other things it changes the category codes of _ and %) and "hopes" for its argument to be read from the .tex-input-file and tokenized under that changed category-code-régime. But the \url-command is cheated out of this hope in case of \url{...} being part of the argument of a \footnote-command because in this case things already got tokenized under normal/unchanged category-code-régime when the argument of the \footnote-command got read from the .tex-input-file and tokenized. — Ulrich Diez, Jun 14 '19 at 19:13

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 14 '19 at 18:06

Well, you can use command \urldef{\urlB} to define the url you need and use \urlB to insert the wanted url into the footnote. That is also usable in normal text ...

Please see this mwe

\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{url}
\urldef{\urlA}\url{https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicodeblock_Ph%C3%B6nizisch} % <========
\urldef{\urlB}\url{https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicodeblock_Ph%C3%B6nizisch} % <========


\begin{document} 

Phoenizisch \urlA\  % <=================================================
    and more text
    with the same ref in a footnote%
 \footnote{some text with the same url
          \urlB\  % <===================================================
        and a closing text.}%
    . After the footnote 

\end{document}

and its result:

and the normal text:

Thank you - I will use this solution, it solves the probem, but I still feel this is not a proper solution for a common problem when writing (putting URLs in footnote seems to strike a decent balance between pointing to your sources and not disturbing the flow of text). Latex should have a "proper" solution! — user855443, Jun 15 '19 at 09:49

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 13 '23 at 12:25

You can simply use \ before characters like _,%, or # when you use \href and/or \url in a footnote. So, you can use the following code,

\documentclass[]{article}
\usepackage{url}
\begin{document}
Phoenizisch \url{https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicodeblock_Ph%C3%B6nizisch}
    and more text
    with the same ref in a footnote%  \footnote{some text with the same url
          \url{{https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicodeblock_Ph%C3%B6nizisch}}
        and a closing text.}%
    . After the footnote
\end{document}

url not working in footnotes - seems to require escape characters, but

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