On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Dan Harkless wrote:
> Dunno about other programs, but you could try Soenke Peter's wget-1.5.3gold,
> which has the Perl regular expression library integrated for use with
> --accept and --reject (see attached mail).
>
> At this time, no opinion has been expressed as to whether the mainline Wget
> should include this change.
Being a [useful-]feature junkie when it comes to wget I feel this could be
included without making the program bloated in any way. Regular
expressions are a good thing, almost always, and it would serve wget's
purpose just great if it works flawless as described (haven't had time to
patch and test myself) since perl is the grand master when it comes to
regular expressions. Maybe with a brief introduction to regular
expressions in the docs/info I think more people would get less files they
don't want when they mirror a page or an ftp (making less traffic on the
network = good), and at the same time you could have _very_ complex
mirrors.
Although replacing the current -A and -R options might not be such a good
idea, since older scripts depending on wget with -A,-R and people who use
them now regulary would be confused if it just stopped working.. backward
compability is always good, but then again it's a pain when it restrain
progress - and I personally have no clue how this could be implemented as
it is right now without letting go of the old -A,-R style, if you don't
create brand new options of course. Then again, having options for _both_
perl regular expressions _and_ the old style sounds like an even worse
idea.
(I'm so happy I'm just a user and not a developer! :-) )
Best regards
Henrik van Ginhoven, Sweden
9799-5
Everyone a story but they end the same
