Hrm, here's the code for the LWP::Simple::head() sub: 
sub head ($)
{
    my($url) = @_;
    _init_ua() unless $ua;

    my $request = HTTP::Request->new(HEAD => $url);
    my $response = $ua->request($request);

    if ($response->is_success) {
        return $response unless wantarray;
        return (scalar $response->header('Content-Type'),
                scalar $response->header('Content-Length'),
                HTTP::Date::str2time($response->header('Last-Modified'
+)),
                HTTP::Date::str2time($response->header('Expires')),
                scalar $response->header('Server'),
               );
    }
    return;
}

[download]

So it looks like it tries to return an array, but what happens if it doesn't get a modified time, or any other element for that matter? It seems to return whatever it gets w/o putting any placeholders in: 

[jane]:~/cat test.pl 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
my @array = head(shift);
my $i = 0;
foreach my $line (@array) {
  print "$i: $line\n";
  $i++;
}

[jane]:~/perl test.pl http://www.fdntech.com
0: text/html
1: 
2: Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) PHP/3.0.14
[jane]:~/

[download]

So, it looks as though it's not really behaving how we would wish it to. Perhaps it should return a hash? Am I totally off-base there?

In reply to Re: LWP::Simple, a bug in head() function? by ender
in thread LWP::Simple, a bug in head() function? by capa

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.