The purpose of the $absolute parameter is to build a link with an absolute path ... this would be used in feeds and such. You may have thought that it would be to create a link to an external url, but that is not the case. url() does not handle external links and this is being addressed: see http://www.drupal.org/node/10888 jim sloan crunchywelch wrote:

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/28491 Post a follow up: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/28491

Project: Drupal Version: 4.6.0 Component: base system Category: bug reports Priority: critical Assigned to: crunchywelch Reported by: crunchywelch Updated by: crunchywelch Status: patch (code needs review)

in common.inc the url() function inverts the treatment of the $absolute parameter on line 1467 in v4.6:

$base = ($absolute ? $base_url .'/' : '');

This prepends the $base_url to the path if $absolute is TRUE, which is inverted logic, it should be:

$base = ($absolute ? '' : $base_url .'/');

This is still a problem in cvs, but I dont have the line number. I can submit a proper patch if needed.

crunchywelch