Full URL or partial URL with internal links?

[Shockt]

Are there any benefits or penalties for using...
/links/
instead of
http://www.mysite.com/links/
...when doing internal linking? I've had a habit of using full URLs but I got thinking the other day, are they really necessary when I am just linking to other content under the same domain? If there is no benefit, "partial" URLs would mean less (a small small fraction, but still less) bandwidth and easier-to-read code compared to using full URLs.

[Chris]

Full URLs are better.

1. 1 less thing for a search engine crawler to mess up. Granted, the chance of messing up is like .000001%, but if that ends up affecting you it won't feel small.

2. If someone completely rips your site they often forget to change internal links, and by checking your incoming links you will be able to identify such people if you do the full link.

[Todd W]

3. mod_rewrite screws up /links/ but not full links

I actually use php and set the site url to $surl then just do <?=$surl?>/whatever.php
etc. etc that way I don't have to repeat the URL a ton and can change it if I change domains or make an ew site w/said software

[Shockt]

Aye, same here Todd. That's how I have been doing it for a while.

And mod_rewrite will screw up "links/" but I don't believe it screws up "/links/" as that refers to the home directory.