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The parenthesis that ends the url of this comment seems not to be considered as part of the link.

The same bug bug was reported on Meta StackOverflow and apparently corrected.

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  • 1
    I ran into this same problem a few days ago when I made this comment; props to you for mentioning it here.
    – J.R.
    Jun 3, 2012 at 19:48

2 Answers 2

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This is intentional as far as automatically linked URLs go. See this answer of mine for the reason.

If, on the other hand, you explicitly say "the link starts here and ends here" by using the link syntax

[see wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology))

it will work, since we allow one level of opened/closed parenthesis, specifically for cases like Wikipedia links.

Update

See URL detecting error with address like "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octet_(computing)" on Meta Stack Overflow for details; long story short: After the next build of the site, this will work as you had expected.

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  • Ok, I didn’t know that. Thanks for the explanation.
    – Denis
    Jun 11, 2012 at 13:11
  • Odd... when I tried that before, I couldn't get it to work – but maybe I just had messed it up somehow...
    – J.R.
    Jun 11, 2012 at 13:13
  • Testing this bug report: the use–mention distinction
    – balpha StaffMod
    May 4, 2014 at 17:56
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This is easily addressed. A link like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology)

and be rewritten with its nonalphanumerics translated into hex using the %XX notation. The ASCII hex set is:

00 nul   01 soh   02 stx   03 etx   04 eot   05 enq   06 ack   07 bel
08 bs    09 ht    0a nl    0b vt    0c np    0d cr    0e so    0f si
10 dle   11 dc1   12 dc2   13 dc3   14 dc4   15 nak   16 syn   17 etb
18 can   19 em    1a sub   1b esc   1c fs    1d gs    1e rs    1f us
20 sp    21  !    22  "    23  #    24  $    25  %    26  &    27  '
28  (    29  )    2a  *    2b  +    2c  ,    2d  -    2e  .    2f  /
30  0    31  1    32  2    33  3    34  4    35  5    36  6    37  7
38  8    39  9    3a  :    3b  ;    3c  <    3d  =    3e  >    3f  ?
40  @    41  A    42  B    43  C    44  D    45  E    46  F    47  G
48  H    49  I    4a  J    4b  K    4c  L    4d  M    4e  N    4f  O
50  P    51  Q    52  R    53  S    54  T    55  U    56  V    57  W
58  X    59  Y    5a  Z    5b  [    5c  \    5d  ]    5e  ^    5f  _
60  `    61  a    62  b    63  c    64  d    65  e    66  f    67  g
68  h    69  i    6a  j    6b  k    6c  l    6d  m    6e  n    6f  o
70  p    71  q    72  r    73  s    74  t    75  u    76  v    77  w
78  x    79  y    7a  z    7b  {    7c  |    7d  }    7e  ~    7f del

And so subbing in the hex for the parens the version of that URL that works is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_%28biology%29

This is easily shown to work by comparing this which works with this which fails.

This is easily shown to work 
by comparing [this which works](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_%28biology%29) 
with [this which fails](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology)).

Hm, actually, those both work! In fact, I can’t manage to get a failure mode to crop up. Do you have an example of something that doesn’t work right?

Perhaps balanced parens work but imbalanced ones do not? Unsure; I have no failure test case. But I’ll bet you anything that subbing in the hex for offending characters will cure whatever problem ails you.

Maybe it’s only in comments where the putative pesky paren problem arises? This comment uses the URL above, properly escaped, without a hitch.

So I think this is easily worked around.

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  • It only didn't work in the comments; it worked fine in the answers. Let me try it again here, in case they fixed the bug: Here's the LINK with the close-paren; here's the LINK with your ASCII workaround... It looks like they've fixed the bug, but I like your answer anyway; it may come in handy some other time.
    – J.R.
    Jun 10, 2012 at 17:07
  • @J.R. We didn't fix anything; your tests are unrelated to what the OP is reporting.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Jun 11, 2012 at 13:06

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