"The space character is excluded because significant spaces may
  disappear and insignificant spaces may be introduced when URI are
  transcribed or typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-
  processing programs.  Whitespace is also used to delimit URI in many
  contexts." -- RFC 2396 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

RFC 2396 is the current URI/URL standard, per http://www.w3.org/Addressing/

I have, however, seen browsers, and IE in particular comes to mind, accept 
space as valid in a URI/URL. Strictly speaking, however, one should insist 
upon "%20".

Or, in short, the answer to the question is no.

Bob.

On 2002.01.10 00:09 der.hans wrote:
> moin, moin,
> 
> have the new versions of the `echo $whatever_html_is_called_this_month`
> standard started allowing spaces in URLs? They used to be quite strictly
> verbotten. They're still dumb, but are they legal per the spec?
> 
> ciao,
> 
> der.hans
> --
> #  http://home.pages.de/~lufthans/   http://www.DevelopOnline.com/
> #  I'm not anti-social, I'm pro-individual. - der.hans
> 
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-- 
Robert A. Klahn
rklahn@acm.org

"Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger and Courage. Anger at the way
things are, and Courage to struggle to create things as they should be." -
St. Augustine