Did you know the escape() function is depreciated. As it turns out it doesn't handle its actual role of escaping characters that well i.e. non-ASCII. In its place you should be using encodeURI OR encodeURIComponent
encodeURI()
Use encodeURI when you want a working URL e.g. something you can use with location.href = '' as it assumes that the input is a complete URI that might have some characters which need encoding in it
var escapedURI = encodeURI("http://example.io/file name with spaces.html")
If you looked at the value of escapedURI it would be
http://www.google.com/file%20name%20with%20spaces.html
encodeURIComponent() encoded the complete string which seem handy but will actually destroy your URI
var encodeURIComponentWithSpaces = encodeURIComponent("http://example.io/file name with spaces.html")
Check out this URL
http%3A%2F%2Fexample.io%2Ffile%20name%20with%20spaces.html
encodeURIComponent() should be used when encoding a param part of a URI.
var encodeURIComponentOnParamsOnly = "http://example.io/file.html?para1=" + encodeURIComponent("va1!%$");
This would return
http://example.io/file.html?para1=va1!%25%24