"The abbreviation IRI is short for "International Resource Identifier". An IRI identifies a resource. The URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) that people use as Web addresses are one form of IRI. Other forms of IRI provide an identifier for a resource without implying its location or how to access it. The notion of IRI is a generalization of URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), allowing non-ASCII characters to be used in the IRI character string."

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