Trailing slash in URLs: Slash or No-slash

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.

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.