[added -io cross-post] John Porter wrote: > > Just MHO, but I don't think this is the kind of thing that should > go in the core. Just MHO. I think I agree. Just to clarify, the only reason it's an RFC and not just a Perl 5 module is because RFC 14 (the one on a new open()) relies on a handler concept for dealing with different file types: open file "/etc/motd"; # file handler (default) open dir "</usr/local/bin"; # dir handler open http "http://www.yahoo.com"; # http handler This type of abstraction would allow you to import custom modules and register them as http handlers without having to change your main code. It also prevents bloat in the IO routines which would otherwise have hardwired-in ways of dealing with this. Modularization lets us update modules that do http manipulation via CPAN without having to release a new version of Perl. Nonetheless, this may not be the best way to go. Perhaps by default, an "http.pm" is provided which allows basic http operations, and is automatically imported, allowing you to say: open http "http://www.foobar.com" natively without having a bunch of "use" statements at the top of your code. Then, if you wanted to override this you could: use Class::Handler; handler http => 'LWP::UserAgent'; open http "http://www.foobar.com"; # now uses the http handler # instead of native http.pm Comments welcome. -Nate