I've noticed that HTML::TreeBuilder is a subclass of HTML::Parser and that
HTML::Parser is required by LWP although it doesn't appear that
HTML::TreeBuilder is.
I've recently noticed that the /usr/bin tools POST, GET, HEAD and
lwp-request provided by LWP are dependant on the deprecated HTML::Parse
module from the HTML::Tree package. I presume that at some point LWP
moved away from HTML::Parse but these tools were forgotten. These tools
fail to work in certain situations without this module being installed
(with HTML::Parse isn't in @INC errors) but do not mention in their
documentation this dependancy.
I bring this up because I had a question today which mentioned that this
person's bash script worked perfectly up until when he tried to pass the
-o switch to lwp-request. He didn't understand Perl and didn't understand
the @INC error message. I don't think he should have had to just to use
this tool.
I have a few questions:
Is HTML::TreeBuilder only required for these tools or does it appear in
other parts of the distribution?
Is there any specific design decision to leave HTML::TreeBuilder out of
the list of required modules?
Is there someone actively maintaining these tools who I should consult
before patching them to not use HTML::Parse and to test (reporting failure
reasonably) that modules exist before "require"ing them?
Is there a reason why all four of these files appear to be identical but
they're not installed as hard links?
Thanks,
Jacinta
--
("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ | Jacinta Richardson |
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