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Re: Question for perl gurus: what creates /bin/{HEAD|GET|POST}?


Gerrit,
Thanks for a quick reply.

On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, Gerrit P. Haase wrote:

> Igor schrieb:
>
> > A question for the perl gurus:
>
> > I noticed that I have 3 files in /bin: HEAD, GET, and POST.  These are
> > interfaces to the LWP library.  Does anyone know what creates them?
> > Looking at the creation times, the most likely culprit is the CPAN perl
> > module, but I'd like to confirm that.
>
> These are part of LWP (libwww) and were installed with the LWP module.
>
> > The reason I'm concerned about it is that the name HEAD clashes with
> > /bin/head.exe, and results in weird-looking problems that took me a while
> > to track down (i.e. 'ls|head' says 'head: command not found' -- I have
> > check_case:strict; I suspect that without it users will simply get the
> > wrong output).  This is most likely Cygwin-specific, as other OSs will
> > easily distinguish between head and HEAD.
>
> Only possibility to have HEAD and head.exe is to use CYGWIN=check_case:strict
> or remove one of them.

I am using check_case:strict.  I had both files present.  I was getting
problems of the sort

$ ls /bin/head
/bin/ls: /bin/head: No such file or directory
$ which head
head: Command not found.
$ ls -F /bin/HEAD /bin/head.exe
/bin/HEAD*  /bin/head.exe*
$ type -a head
bash: type: head: not found
$

FWIW, having check_case:relaxed also allows both files to be present, but
/bin/HEAD is now also recognized as /bin/head, which leads to other
problems.

> > A suggestion/request to the perl maintainer: change the names of HEAD,
> > GET, and POST to LWP-HEAD, LWP-GET, and LWP-POST...  For consistency, this
> > should probably be done in the main perl development branch, anyway,
> > rather than in the Cygwin port...  Does this sound very unreasonable?
>
> The LWP module isn't part of the Cygwin perl distribution.  If you
> install LWP you are asked if you want to install these shortcuts
> This was included in the LWP setup because of the problems with Cygwin
> and other case insensitive platforms.

Hmm, I don't believe I was asked anything - everything was installed
automatically...  I can re-check this.

> You may try to convince the LWP maintainer to include an additional
> option to get the same shortcuts with a userdefined name instead of
> 'get them or leave them' as it is now. (mailto: libwww at perl.org)

It's probably not worth the bother, especially if the above confirmation
prompt is present...  Thanks for the analysis.
	Igor
-- 
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