parameter in the URL. It also supports transfer of ranges for FTP transfers
using the "Range" header.

Directory listings are by default returned unprocessed (as returned
from the ftp server) with the content media type reported to be
"text/ftp-dir-listing". The C<File::Listing> module provides methods
for parsing of these directory listing.

The ftp module is also able to convert directory listings to HTML and
this can be requested via the standard HTTP content negotiation
mechanisms (add an "Accept: text/html" header in the request if you
want this).

For normal file retrievals, the "Content-Type" is guessed based on the
file name suffix. See L<LWP::MediaTypes>.

The "If-Modified-Since" request header works for servers that implement
the MDTM command.  It will probably not work for directory listings though.

Example:

  $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'ftp://me:passwd@ftp.some.where.com/');
  $req->header(Accept => "text/html, */*;q=0.1");

=head2 News Requests

Access to the USENET News system is implemented through the NNTP
protocol.  The name of the news server is obtained from the
NNTP_SERVER environment variable and defaults to "news".  It is not
possible to specify the hostname of the NNTP server in news: URLs.

The library supports GET and HEAD to retrieve news articles through the
NNTP protocol.  You can also post articles to newsgroups by using
(surprise!) the POST method.

GET on newsgroups is not implemented yet.

Examples:

  $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'news:abc1234@a.sn.no');

  $req = HTTP::Request->new(POST => 'news:comp.lang.perl.test');
  $req->header(Subject => 'This is a test',
               From    => 'me@some.where.org');
  $req->content(<<EOT);
  This is the content of the message that we are sending to
  the world.
  EOT


=head2 Gopher Request

The library supports the GET and HEAD methods for gopher requests.  All
request header values are ignored.  HEAD cheats and returns a
response without even talking to server.

Gopher menus are always converted to HTML.

The response "Content-Type" is generated from the document type
encoded (as the first letter) in the request URL path itself.

Example:

  $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'gopher://gopher.sn.no/');



=head2 File Request

The library supports GET and HEAD methods for file requests.  The
"If-Modified-Since" header is supported.  All other headers are
ignored.  The I<host> component of the file URL must be empty or set
to "localhost".  Any other I<host> value will be treated as an error.

Directories are always converted to an HTML document.  For normal
files, the "Content-Type" and "Content-Encoding" in the response are
guessed based on the file suffix.

Example:

  $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'file:/etc/passwd');


=head2 Mailto Request

You can send (aka "POST") mail messages using the library.  All
headers specified for the request are passed on to the mail system.
The "To" header is initialized from the mail address in the URL.

Example:

  $req = HTTP::Request->new(POST => 'mailto:libwww@perl.org');
  $req->header(Subject => "subscribe");
  $req->content("Please subscribe me to the libwww-perl mailing list!\n");

=head2 CPAN Requests

URLs with scheme C<cpan:> are redirected to the a suitable CPAN
mirror.  If you have your own local mirror of CPAN you might tell LWP
to use it for C<cpan:> URLs by an assignment like this: