Non alpha-numeric characters in URL

If I visit http://†.com in Chrome or Internet Explorer, it will bring me to http://xn--lvg.com.

I know it doesn't work in Opera, Safari, and Firefox.

Why does † gets translated to xn--lvg? What's the relation between them? Is there a list that maps t开发者_运维知识库hese weird characters to their translated equivalents in Chrome or Internet Explorer?

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It is the punycode representation.

Here is the relevant RFC.