Hyperref capitalizes the URL

Question

I was trying to embed a link (which contains both upper-case and lower-case letters) on a text. Here is the code snippet:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\href{http://goo.gl/maps/vcZfr}{Publications}

%% The above embedding could not redirect me to the correct link. 
%% Instead it led me to https://goo.gl/MAPS/VCZFR
\end{document}

Could you help me out with why some letters got capitalized?

Answer 1

hyperref does not do anything like this. The MWE of the question gives the following in the PDF file (pdflatex):

/Subtype/Link/A<</Type/Action/S/URI/URI(http://goo.gl/maps/vcZfr)>>

The URL is unchanged. Maybe the \href is inside an argument, which is uppercased later (e.g. via \MakeUppercase).

A workaround is a protected macro, which is not affected by \MakeUppercase or \uppercase:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}

\protected\def\hrefvcZfr{\href{http://goo.gl/maps/vcZfr}}

\begin{document}

\href{http://goo.gl/maps/vcZfr}{Publications}
\MakeUppercase{\hrefvcZfr{Publications}}

\end{document}