I looked into this. Apparently it does respect ports, doesn't require
socket/handle management, and doesn't handle HTTP redirects/etc. The
token "`http" is a misleading choice. Ignoring the absence of handle
management, it works a lot like the socket extensions described
earlier the thread. This was a convenience method added via operator
overloading.
I think the idea of adding socketless sends via overloading is
interesting. You could do
(`"localhost:1234";`ipc) 4: "a:1"
for a socketless IPC send.
Then perhaps you could do
(h;`http) 4: "GET /"
for a stateful send, where h is an integer atom representing an "http"
handle. Possibly you could open this handle using
3: (`"hostname";80;`http)
Without looking I can't tell whether you can use the same handles for
either IPC or HTTP. There is an IPC handshake so I think not.
The token `text or similar is perhaps a better choice than `http.
I think HTTP redirects and the like should not be added. At that point
you are reimplementing cURL.
Kevin