On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, PK Eidesis wrote: > Chris Devers wrote: > > if I rename HEAD to lwp-head, then won't other Perl programs that depend > upon HEAD break? They will be looking for HEAD which is now lwp-head.
Maybe, but I wouldn't worry about it. LWP's HEAD is an optional program that Perl developers shouldn't rely upon -- it's just a throw-in that can make some command line stuff easier. If you look at the source, it should be a short little script that just calls $lwp->head( $url ) [or something to that effect]. If someone wants to put that functionality in a program, it's more efficient & reliable to just put that statement in directly, rather than depending on the user to have installed this little helper program (with the right name, in the right directory, set as executable, etc). To hell with all that, just have you script "use LWP; my $lwp = new LWP; my $head = $lwp->head( $url )" or whatever and be done with it. :) LWP just offers HEAD as a freebie /slash/ demo of how to use the library, but most users can get the same result with "lynx --head $site" or opening up "telnet $site 80\n\nHEAD\n\n", and Perl scripts should never rely on HEAD being available or mandatory. There's always a better alternative, at least in practice. > In a case of a rarer condition, if there are any HFS-style case-blind > applications that might want to call head, they will end up calling > HEAD. ....and get the LWP program when they wanted the stream filter. This is a much more likely & broken problem. -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED] Apache / mod_perl / http://homepage.mac.com/chdevers/resume/ "More war soon. You know how it is." -- mnftiu.cc
