Yes, you are right about the HTTP protocol.

It's just a quick hack to show how it would work,
after I tested the script successfully I didn't bother to look up the http references...
Lazy as I am I debug my cgi scripts from time to time with telnet this way.

Although I believe to remember if you don't send the HTTP Version the webserver has to assume you are a HTTP/1.0 client.

There's however a reason I suggested to go this way,
It's possible to parse the data you get and to request more if needed.

It's also hard to say which way I would go without knowing about the purpose of reading the first 512 bytes of a page.

Although I believe it's very often better to write your own module,
you'll learn something and sometimes existing modules simply don't do what you expect due to their complexity.
It's also easier to customize your own modules.

I believe closing the socket SHOULDN'T have any effect on the remote server, since it's always possible the connection breaks.

But I agree the script is not very friendly, I also would do some further work before using it..

In reply to Re^3: Downloading first X bytes of a file by misc
in thread Downloading first X bytes of a file by pc0019

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.