pslr

A focused, spec-complete implementation of the Public Suffix List (PSL) for R. pslr bundles a reproducible, pinned PSL snapshot and implements the official prevailing-rule algorithm to answer public-suffix (eTLD) and registrable-domain (eTLD+1) queries.

Distinguishes the ICANN and PRIVATE rule sections.
Accepts Unicode, ASCII, and A-label hostnames via punycoder canonicalization; returns ASCII or Unicode output.
Works fully offline from the bundled snapshot; an explicit, validated psl_refresh() is the only network path.
Matcher compiled with cpp11; no external system library required.

Installation

Install the released version from CRAN:

install.packages("pslr")

Or the development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("bart-turczynski/pslr")

pslr depends on punycoder, which is installed automatically from CRAN.

Usage

library(pslr)

public_suffix("www.example.co.uk")
#> [1] "co.uk"
registrable_domain("www.example.co.uk")
#> [1] "example.co.uk"

# ICANN vs PRIVATE sections
public_suffix("user.github.io")
#> [1] "github.io"
public_suffix("user.github.io", section = "icann")
#> [1] "io"

# Explicit membership vs the implicit default rule
is_public_suffix("madeuptld")                 # implicit "*"
#> [1] TRUE
is_public_suffix("madeuptld", unknown = "na") # explicit only
#> [1] NA

# Split a host, or inspect the prevailing rule
suffix_extract("blog.user.github.io")
#>                 input                host subdomain domain    suffix
#> 1 blog.user.github.io blog.user.github.io      blog   user github.io
#>   registrable_domain
#> 1     user.github.io
public_suffix_rule("a.b.kobe.jp")
#>         input  host_ascii      rule     kind rule_section public_suffix_ascii
#> 1 a.b.kobe.jp a.b.kobe.jp *.kobe.jp wildcard        icann           b.kobe.jp

See vignette("introduction", package = "pslr") for the full tour: section choice, the unknown-suffix policy, IDN output, terminal dots, refresh and activation, reproducibility, and security notes.

Reproducibility

A result depends on both which list answered and how hosts were normalized. psl_version() reports the active-list provenance plus the runtime normalization identifiers; record it alongside reproducibility-sensitive output.

How pslr compares to other PSL libraries

The Public Suffix List website catalogs implementations in C, C#, C++, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Swift, and more — but no R. pslr fills that gap, and it is built to be a reproducibility- and correctness-first engine rather than a quick suffix splitter.

The table compares pslr with a representative set of the most established libraries from that catalog, across the dimensions that matter for correct, auditable suffix handling. ✅ first-class · ◐ partial/limited · ❌ absent.

Library (language)	Full algorithm (`*`/`!`)	ICANN / PRIVATE / both	IDN + Punycode	Offline default + explicit refresh	Queryable provenance	Compiled core	Strict input validation	Unlisted-TLD policy configurable
pslr (R)	✅	✅ 3-way	✅ in & out	✅ bundled; validated HTTPS-only `psl_refresh()`	✅ list and normalization identity	✅ `cpp11`	✅ rejects URLs, IPv4, IPv6	✅ `unknown=`
libpsl (C)	✅	✅ 3-way	✅	✅ bundled; OS-package update	◐ sha1 + mtime	✅	◐	✅
x/net/publicsuffix (Go)	✅	◐ `icann` flag	❌ ASCII only	✅ embedded; bump module	◐ date constant	✅	◐	❌
publicsuffix-go (Go)	✅	◐ toggle private	✅	✅ embedded	❌	❌	◐	✅
psl crate (Rust)	✅	◐ per-suffix type	✅	✅ compiled-in	◐ dated releases	✅	❌	◐
tldextract (Python)	✅	◐ private on/off	✅	⚠ network-first; offline opt-in	❌	❌	◐	❌
publicsuffixlist (Python)	✅	◐ exclude private	✅	✅ bundled + updater	◐ date in version	❌	❌	❌
public_suffix (Ruby)	✅	◐ `ignore_private`	❌ caller pre-encodes	✅ bundled	❌	❌	◐	✅
php-domain-parser (PHP)	✅	✅ 3-way	✅	⚠ not bundled; PSR-16 cache	◐ `isKnown` flags	❌	◐	◐
tldts (JS/TS)	✅	◐ `allowPrivateDomains`	✅	✅ embedded; npm bump	◐ submodule pin	◐ optional WASM	✅	◐
Guava `InternetDomainName` (Java)	◐	✅ registry vs public	✅	◐ in-jar; bump Guava	❌	❌	◐	❌

What `pslr` does differently

Provenance is best-in-class. psl_version() records the list identity (source, commit, date, SHA-256) and the normalization identity (normalizer package + version, profile, Unicode version). A PSL answer depends on both which list answered and how the host was normalized — pslr is the only surveyed library that surfaces both, so a result is genuinely reproducible.
Conformance is verified. The package ships the official upstream tests.txt vectors, pinned in lockstep with the bundled snapshot and run on every check.
Offline by default, one hardened network path. Every query works with zero network access; psl_refresh() is the only code that touches the network — HTTPS-only, credential- and downgrade-rejecting, size-capped, atomically committed. This is stricter than network-first designs and pairs with the reproducibility story rather than fighting it.
Strict, policy-driven validation. URLs, IPv6, dotted-decimal IPv4, and malformed labels are rejected; invalid = "na" / "error" lets you choose silent NA or a hard stop. Many libraries are deliberately lenient.
Vectorized, NA-safe, name-preserving. Every function operates on a whole character vector — the idiomatic shape for data work in R.

Trade-offs

Session-global active list. There is no per-call list switching yet; the active list is per-session state (psl_use() / psl_refresh()).
Hostnames, not URLs. URL-shaped input is rejected by design; parse the host out first or use rurl.
No network-first auto-fetch. Refreshing is always explicit — a deliberate choice for reproducibility, not a convenience feature.

Development

Install dependencies plus the dev tooling used by the checks:

Rscript -e 'pak::local_install_deps(dependencies = TRUE)'

Run the same verification CI runs (lint + R CMD check --as-cran):

Rscript -e 'lints <- lintr::lint_package(); if (length(lints)) { print(lints); quit(status = 1) }' && Rscript -e 'rcmdcheck::rcmdcheck(args = "--as-cran", error_on = "warning")'

R CMD check runs the testthat and cucumber specs, so the behaviour specs are verified as part of the check. A non-CRAN performance benchmark and its release gate live in bench/benchmark.R; recorded reference results are in docs/benchmarks.md.

Project layout

R/ — package source (edit roxygen comments here, not man/ or NAMESPACE).
src/ — the cpp11 matcher core.
man/ — generated help pages (devtools::document()).
tests/testthat/ — testthat tests and cucumber feature specs.
vignettes/ — long-form documentation.
data-raw/ — the deterministic snapshot regeneration pipeline.
docs/ — durable project context: PRD.md (normative spec), architecture.md (how the code is built), decisions.md (design-decision log), benchmarks.md.

Acknowledgments

These packages build on data, libraries, and prior work from many others. See ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.md for the full list of thanks.

pslr is part of a small ecosystem of R packages by the same author:

punycoder — the Punycode and IDNA codec that pslr uses for host canonicalization before PSL matching. Use it directly for raw Unicode ↔︎ ACE round-trips.
rurl — full URL parsing, normalization, cleaning, and joining toolkit. Uses pslr as its PSL engine; reach for it when you need more than domain extraction.

Citation

If you use pslr in your work, please cite it. Run citation("pslr") for the current citation, or see CITATION.cff.

Each release is archived on Zenodo. Cite the concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20973660 to refer to the software in general (it always resolves to the latest version), or the version-specific DOI shown on the Zenodo record for a particular release.

License

Package code is MIT licensed. The bundled Public Suffix List data (inst/extdata/) is distributed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0; see inst/NOTICE and inst/extdata/PSL-LICENSE.

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