If local path is a directory, then the basename of the file to save is picked up from the Content-Disposition header or the URL of the response. If the file already exists, then lwp-download will prompt before it overwrites and will fail if its standard input is not a terminal. This form of invocation will also fail is no acceptable filename can be derived from the sources mentioned above.

If local path is not a directory, then it is simply used as the path to save into.

The lwp-download program is implemented using the libwww-perl library. It is better suited to down load big files than the lwp-request program because it does not store the file in memory. Another benefit is that it will keep you updated about its progress and that you don't have much options to worry about.

Use the -a option to save the file in text (ascii) mode. Might make a difference on dosish systems.

EXAMPLE

Fetch the newest and greatest perl version:

 $ lwp-download http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz
 Saving to 'latest.tar.gz'...
 11.4 MB received in 8 seconds (1.43 MB/sec)

AUTHOR

Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>