Re: Windows Wget 1.10.2 - two bugs
Bug 1) Wget's manual says as shown below, but Windows Wget does not
generate the file.1 and file2. - it just overwrites.
To reproduce the problem:
WGet -S -N http://www.pjm.com/pub/account/lmpgen/lmppost.html
Wget will keep overwriting the local file each time the web page's
timestamp updates, rather than creating numbered versions.
from manual:
-nc
--no-clobber
If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory,
Wget's behavior depends on a few options, including -nc. In certain
cases, the local file will be clobbered, or overwritten, upon repeated
download. In other cases it will be preserved.
When running Wget without -N, -nc, or -r, downloading the same file
in the same directory will result in the original copy of file being
preserved and the second copy being named file.1. If that file is
downloaded yet again, the third copy will be named file.2, and so on.
When -nc is specified, this behavior is suppressed, and Wget will refuse
to download newer copies of file. Therefore, "no-clobber" is actually a
misnomer in this mode--it's not clobbering that's prevented (as the
numeric suffixes were already preventing clobbering), but rather the
multiple version saving that's prevented.
When running Wget with -r, but without -N or -nc, re-downloading a
file will result in the new copy simply overwriting the old. Adding -nc
will prevent this behavior, instead causing the original version to be
preserved and any newer copies on the server to be ignored.
When running Wget with -N, with or without -r, the decision as to
whether or not to download a newer copy of a file depends on the local
and remote timestamp and size of the file (see Time-Stamping.). -nc may
not be specified at the same time as -N.
Note that when -nc is specified, files with the suffixes .html or
.htm will be loaded from the local disk and parsed as if they had been
retrieved from the Web.
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Bug 2) (Sort of a bug - or a feature request) Normal Windows protocol is
to have an ERRORLEVEL returned, whose value indicates program success or
failure. WGET is not doing this - in the above example, the ERRORLEVEL
is the same for the two cases of retrieving an updated page and not
retrieving an updated page (i.e. page is unchanged). This makes it
impossible to build a batch file whose behavior is conditional on a new
file being downloaded.
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Otherwise a great program. Very useful.
David MacMillan
