Hi Monks,

I have a script that's using LWP to do very simple FTP gets and puts. The code for the FTP GET looks something like this:

#an FTP get
my $ua;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
$ua->agent("$0/0.1 ".$ua->agent);
my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => "$url");
my $result = $ua->request($req);

[download]

And the code for an FTP PUT looks something like this:

#an FTP put
#open the file and read the contents
my $content;
if (open DATA_READER, "$data_file") {
     $content = join ("", <DATA_READER>);
     close DATA_READER;
} else {
     warn "UNABLE TO READ $data_file, upload will be empty!  $!\n";
}

my $ua;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();      
$ua->agent("$0/0.1 ".$ua->agent);
my $req = HTTP::Request->new('PUT',"$url",undef,"$content");
my $result = $ua->request($req);

[download]

The thing is, I really don't care about the file data itself--in fact, when I do the ftp get, I never actually write the file to disk; I'm just concerned about whether the file was transfered properly or not. Some of the files I have to fetch and put are rather large...around 100-250MB. With the above method, perl is taking up a huge chunk of memory to buffer the files. Can anyone suggest a way to reduce the memory footprint of this code? For instance, is there a way to feed the file to the FTP put without buffering it into memory first? Likewise, is there a way to flush the buffer in the FTP get as data is coming in? It would be best if I can do this with LWP instead of having to resort to using other modules.

In reply to Using Less Memory for LWP/FTP by Anonymous Monk

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