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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Here's an interesting one for you.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Can I call an HTTP page from WITHIN a PHP
or PERL script?</FONT></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have a legacy server whose only presented
interface is itself a web server. </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>The web server
in question is kind of messy, and intended for querying by a particular embedded
hardware client rather than by a human driving a browser. Nonetheless, point a
browser at it gives a structured response.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'm trying to write a human-friendly interface so
that the content can be viewed with a web browser in a human-readable format.
For various reasons, it makes sense to write this as something that is, itself,
a server-side script, rather than a client-side application.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hence, can I call an HTTP page from
WITHIN a PHP or PERL script (I'm not fussed which.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>If I can, then I can use either of those languages
to parse the content and generate a much prettier web page (including generating
links to drill down further, which is the purpose behind all this.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I realise that I _could_ shell out to the operating
system, run something like Lynx, and then take its STDOUT into STDIN, but this
would immediately force a particular piece of client software onto the
middleware server, which I don't want for O/S portability reasons.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Any ideas?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><BR>Mark</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
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