[gccsdk] Parsing wget output

I've just been testing wget 1.13.4 from the autobuilder to make sure
it's ARMv7 safe, and while I was at it I checked it was still compatible
with MBBack. The answer to the second question turned out to be no.

wget 1.11.4, which is what I was using before, could be persuaded to
check for the existence of a remote file without downloading it. I did
this by a combination of the switches '-nv' (non-verbose output), '-o'
(write stderr to file) and '--spider' (don't download). I discovered
through experimentation that the -nv option only considered error
messages 'important' enough to write, and therefore if the output file
was blank then the operation could be presumed a success.

Unfortunately the behaviour of the -nv option has changed, and now it
reports success as well. It doesn't even report it consistently:

2012-09-20 21:52:01 URL: http://www.somethi.ng/valid.html 200 OK

http://not.val.id/at.all:
Remote file does not exist -- broken link!!!

What should I do with this? Check the last three bytes of the output
file for consecutive exclamation marks? Assume that a single line
containing the string "200 OK" is the only possible non-error output,
just as no output was previously the only possible non-error output?

Is there any way of calling wget from a computer program at all?

It's easy enough when I actually want to download the file, as I can
just check if the requested target file exists or not, but returning
results from the program seems to be a minefield when there's no human
supervision. Surely someone must be using wget to do this, somewhere?

--
__<^>__
/ _ _ \ I don't have a problem with God; it's his fan club I can't stand.
( ( |_| ) )
\_> <_/ ======================= Martin Bazley ==========================

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