Trailing slash is a forward slash at the end of the web page URL.
The convention is URL ending with a slash denotes the URL pointing to a directory otherwise, it points to a file. Not having a trailing tear is preferable mainly due to ease of use.
Web standards has supported this convention as well – https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash
Historically, it’s common for URLs with a trailing slash to indicate a directory and those without a trailing slash to denote a file.
Example:
http://example.com/foo/ (with trailing slash, conventionally a directory) http://example.com/foo (without trailing slash, conventionally a file)
This could be understood better if we look at it from the application’s perspective based on which file is being rendered.
| File | Result | URL |
|---|---|---|
| example.html | example.html | site.com/example |
| example.js | example/index.html | site.com/example/ |
| example/index.js | example/index.html | site.com/example/ |
So it is better to be consistent with slash usage and always configure applications to generate consistent URLs. Also, this consistent usage helps reduce any SEO-related issues – no duplicate content, poor or different user experience for the same URL, etc.