setting top.location.hash with %20 in firefox

Question

In firefox, using this javascript:

top.location.hash = "#here%20are%20spaces";

changes the browser url to:

http://mysite.com/#here are spaces

I expected firefox to show the encoded spaces as %20 in the browser url.

1. What's going on here? Why is firefox not setting the url to the string as I passed it?
2. How can I force firefox to update the url with the encoded characters?

and...

If I add set the url to

top.location.hash = "#here%20are%20spaces%";

It works(!?), albeit with an extra unwanted % appended to the end. I am not sure if this is a bug or a feature. Ideas or references on how to proceed?

Answer 1

%20 are replaced with an empty space (in firefox 3) just for readability purpose. You shouldn't worry about it.

Answer 2

It still seems to be an active Firefox Bug for this issue (albeit reported for Firefox in Ubuntu, but also seen for other OS)....