Unpythonic Python

[David Abrahams]

Rob Williscroft <rtw at freenet.co.uk> writes:

> David Abrahams wrote in news:uzn4j2s38.fsf at boost-consulting.com in
> comp.lang.python: 
>
>>> That's not the problem.  I can download the file reliably from other
>>> machines. 
>
> At the same time, using http ?

I can download the file reliably using IE from my WinXP box.

I can download the file reliably using urllib from Cygwin Python 2.3.2

The 2nd element returned by urlretrieve is 

  'Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:50:17 GMT\r\nServer: Apache/2.0.40 (Red Hat Linux)\r\nLast-Modified: Wed, 25 Aug 20
  2 GMT\r\nETag: "b63d5b-20ec84b-18057e80"\r\nAccept-Ranges: bytes\r\nContent-Length: 34523211\r\nContent-Type:
  n/x-bzip2\r\nConnection: close\r\n'

>> Actually it appears that urllib is having some problem on Unix, at
>> least the one from Python-2.2.x.  This fails on Both FreeBSD and
>> Linux:
>> 
>>   urllib.urlretrieve(
>>         'http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/boost-cvsroot.tar.bz2',
>>         'boost-cvsroot.tar.bz2')
>> 
>> Trying again with Python 2.3 on Cygwin.

As you can see from the above, it works.  Is there a known urllib bug
in earlier Pythons?

> Is it possible the file is being (re) uploaded (via cvs) during your 
> cron job's download, thus truncating your download ?

I don't think so.

> Perhapse you should change to cvs:
>
>   os.system( 'cvs ... ' )

The problem with that is that I want to capture the whole CVS
history, not just today's state.

> FWIW, I tried downlading with IE using the link above I got a
> truncated 6 and bit MB's (16:15 BST (UTC +0100)).
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Sorry, what does that mean?  Did it show that message in a dialog,
or...?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
http://www.boost-consulting.com