Check URL --> Simply? (fwd)

[Jeff Shannon]

David Eppstein wrote:

> In article <tnmkhd51goof0b at xo.supernews.co.uk>,
>  "Julius Welby" <jwelby at waitrose.com> wrote:
>
> > > Ever more opportunity at shameless self-promotion.  This zillion special
> > > cases of 404-ish pages is something I use as an example in my
> > > forthcoming book _Text Processing in Python_ (a few more months until
> > > done).  Here's the code I present as an attempt at recognizing what only
> > > humans can:
>
> Humans can't usually see the http response line with the actual 404 number
> in it in place of the 200 indicating an ok page, but machines can -- why
> don't you use that?

Among other things, someone already pointed out that certain "helpful"
webservers will not only generate pretty error pages, but will return those
pages with a 200 number instead of a 404 number.  So, while checking the code is
a good idea, it is not sufficient.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International