# Incomplete topic titles beginning with a number can have odd behavior
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [June 5, 2020, 7:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975 "2020-06-05T19:38:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jose\_C\_Gomez](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jose_C_Gomez)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2020, 7:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975/1 "2020-06-05T19:38:27Z")
If you put a title that starts with a number and that number coincides with a different topic ID. Then sharing or clicking on a direct link (without the post ID) automatically redirects you to the clashing topic.
For example this post title starts with 101646 which is the POST ID of another topic [(this one)](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic-list-previews/101646)
But then if I post a link to this
```plaintext
https://meta.discourse.org/t/101646-12-42-interesting-bug-maybe
```
Copy paste works best for this example
Which is the URL of this (current) topic it redirects to the Topic List Preview (unless I provide the /153975) at the end.
However any other post I can l link to directly as long as they don’t have a shared ID at the beginning of the URL
IE:
```plaintext
https://meta.discourse.org/t/install-plugins-in-discourse
```
Redirects propely.
---
### Author:  [@maiki](https://meta.discourse.org/u/maiki)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2020, 7:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975/2 "2020-06-05T19:43:38Z")
If it doesn’t have the topic ID, I’m sure it’s doing a lookup, and your number URL confuses that function.
Not sure it’s a bug, since Discourse doesn’t share URLs sans topic ID.
---
### Author:  [@Jose\_C\_Gomez](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jose_C_Gomez)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2020, 7:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975/3 "2020-06-05T19:44:33Z")
Sure mayhaps not a bug just an interesting observation. The link does work though if the number doesn’t clash… so still a bit odd
---
### Author:  [@maiki](https://meta.discourse.org/u/maiki)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2020, 7:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975/4 "2020-06-05T19:48:58Z")
You just need the topic ID, the rest of it is parsed. For instance, this topic is available at `https://meta.discourse.org/t/123-numbers-dont-mean-a-thing/153975`.
That means you can fix errors in the title/URL, without having to fix existing links. Pretty neat. 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Jose\_C\_Gomez](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jose_C_Gomez)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2020, 8:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975/5 "2020-06-05T20:12:33Z")
Interesting but if you don’t have a Topic ID it does (generally) find the right topic based on the title.
---
### Author:  [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2020, 8:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975/6 "2020-06-05T20:49:48Z")
> [@Jose\_C\_Gomez](#):
>
> ```plaintext
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/101646-12-42-interesting-bug-maybe
>
> ```
>
> Copy paste works best for this example
>
> Which is the URL of this (current) topic
No, that is incorrect, the URL of this topic is
`https://meta.discourse.org/t/101646-12-42-interesting-bug-maybe/153975`, not `https://meta.discourse.org/t/101646-12-42-interesting-bug-maybe/`
So if you’re entering an **incomplete** topic URL then it will _try_ to resolve it - using the number…
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/incomplete-topic-titles-beginning-with-a-number-can-have-odd-behavior/153975/7 "2020-07-05T20:54:14Z")
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