本人在看《图解HTTP》的时候，刚开始还对URI和URL的区别不是太在意，越到后面越发觉区别两者的必要性。
英文文档：“A URI is a uniform resource identifier while a URL is a uniform resource locator. Hence every URL is a URI, abstractly speaking, but not every URI is a URL. This is because there is another subcategory of URIs, uniform resource names (URNs), which name resources but do not specify how to locate them. The mailto, news, and isbn URIs shown above are examples of URNs.
The conceptual distinction between URIs and URLs is reflected in the differences between this class and the URL class.
An instance of this class represents a URI reference in the syntactic sense defined by RFC 2396. A URI may be either absolute or relative. A URI string is parsed according to the generic syntax without regard to the scheme, if any, that it specifies. No lookup of the host, if any, is performed, and no scheme-dependent stream handler is constructed. Equality, hashing, and comparison are defined strictly in terms of the character content of the instance. In other words, a URI instance is little more than a structured string that supports the syntactic, scheme-independent operations of comparison, normalization, resolution, and relativization.
An instance of the URL class, by contrast, represents the syntactic components of a URL together with some of the information required to access the resource that it describes. A URL must be absolute, that is, it must always specify a scheme. A URL string is parsed according to its scheme. A stream handler is always established for a URL, and in fact it is impossible to create a URL instance for a scheme for which no handler is available. Equality and hashing depend upon both the scheme and the Internet address of the host, if any; comparison is not defined. In other words, a URL is a structured string that supports the syntactic operation of resolution as well as the network I/O operations of looking up the host and opening a connection to the specified resource.”
中文文档："URI 是统一资源标识符，而 URL 是统一资源定位符。因此，笼统地说，每个 URL 都是 URI，但不一定每个 URI 都是 URL。这是因为 URI 还包括一个子类，即统一资源名称 (URN)，它命名资源但不指定如何定位资源。上面的 mailto、news 和 isbn URI 都是 URN 的示例。
URI 和 URL 概念上的不同反映在此类和 URL 类的不同中。
此类的实例代表由 RFC 2396 定义的语法意义上的一个 URI 引用。URI 可以是绝对的，也可以是相对的。对 URI 字符串按照一般语法进行解析，不考虑它所指定的方案（如果有）不对主机（如果有）执行查找，也不构造依赖于方案的流处理程序。相等性、哈希计算以及比较都严格地根据实例的字符内容进行定义。换句话说，一个 URI 实例和一个支持语法意义上的、依赖于方案的比较、规范化、解析和相对化计算的结构化字符串差不多。
作为对照，URL 类的实例代表了 URL 的语法组成部分以及访问它描述的资源所需的信息。URL 必须是绝对的，即它必须始终指定一个方案。URL 字符串按照其方案进行解析。通常会为 URL 建立一个流处理程序，实际上无法为未提供处理程序的方案创建一个 URL 实例。相等性和哈希计算依赖于方案和主机的 Internet 地址（如果有）；没有定义比较。换句话说，URL 是一个结构化字符串，它支持解析的语法运算以及查找主机和打开到指定资源的连接之类的网络 I/O 操作。
"
以上是从官方文档对于URI的解释中出现的，对于URI、URL、URN的区别。简单地看，可以用一个表格来说明这三者的区别。
|
名词 |
特性 |
|
URI统一资源标识符 |
既可以相对地也可以绝对地标识一个资源的地址 |
|
URL统一资源定位符 |
是比URI更具体形式，只能是绝对地标识一个资源的地址 |
|
URN统一资源名称 |
只命名一个资源但不指定如何定位资源 |
参考网址：https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/net/URI.html
http://download.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/6/docs/zh/api/java/net/URI.html