Perl LWP modules and UNIX 'head' file

Jun 03, '01 02:27:27PM

Contributed by: bjepson

The LWP suite of Perl modules and applications is a popular choice for developing powerful automated web clients in Perl. However, if you install it under Mac OS X, it could make a dangerous change to your system (if Mac OS X is installed on an HFS+ file system).

LWP creates an executable program called /usr/bin/HEAD. Because the file system is case-insensitive, this ends up replacing the essential Unix utility called /usr/bin/head. After you install LWP, you can rename /usr/bin/HEAD to /usr/bin/HEAD_LWP, and copy /usr/bin/head from your Mac OS X install CD. I learned about this problem from:

http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@perl.apache.org/msg00492.html

- Brian

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