How to find out if string has already been URL encoded?

Try decoding the url. If the resulting string is shorter than the original then the original URL was already encoded, else you can safely encode it (either it is not encoded, or even post encoding the url stays as is, so encoding again will not result in a wrong url). Below is sample pseudo (inspired by ruby) code:

# Returns encoded URL for any given URL after determining whether it is already encoded or not
    def escape(url)
      unescaped_url = URI.unescape(url)
      if (unescaped_url.length < url.length)
        return url
      else
        return URI.escape(url)
      end
    end

Use regexp to check if your string contains illegal characters (i.e. characters which cannot be found in URL-encoded string, like whitespace).

Decode, compare to original. If it does differ, original is encoded. If it doesn't differ, original isn't encoded. But still it says nothing about whether the newly decoded version isn't still encoded. A good task for recursion.

I hope one can't write a quine in urlencode, or this algorithm would get stuck.

Exception: When a string contains "+" character url decoder replaces it with a space even though the string is not url encoded