http_ping(1)

✨ http_ping 💖

okay bestie so you know how ping(8) tells you if a host is alive but it's giving absolutely nothing about, like, actual web stuff?? 💀 yeah. this is the glow-up. it's http_ping, from the General Commands Manual, and it measures HTTP latency — aka how long it actually takes for a real HTTP fetch to come back. no cap. 🌸

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

http_ping [-count n] [-interval n] [-quiet] [-proxy host:port] url

that's it. that's the whole vibe. one url, a couple of optional little flags, and you're off. 💅

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

so what it does is: it runs an HTTP fetch every few seconds, and it times how long each one takes. that's the whole thing. over and over. like a heartbeat monitor but for a URL. 🫶

here's what an actual run looks like, so you know what you're getting into:

% http_ping http://www.example.com/
7816 bytes from http://www.example.com/: 246.602 ms (9.923c/23.074r/213.605d)
7816 bytes from http://www.example.com/: 189.997 ms (11.619c/22.971r/155.407d)
7816 bytes from http://www.example.com/: 190.463 ms (8.994c/25.091r/156.378d)
7816 bytes from http://www.example.com/: 190.07 ms (9.234c/23.9r/156.936d)
7816 bytes from http://www.example.com/: 190.706 ms (10.142c/46.579r/133.985d)
^C
--- http://www.example.com/ http_ping statistics ---
5 fetches started, 5 completed (100%), 0 failures (0%), 0 timeouts (0%)
total    min/avg/max = 189.997/201.568/246.602 ms
connect  min/avg/max = 8.994/9.9824/11.619 ms
response min/avg/max = 22.971/28.323/46.579 ms
data     min/avg/max = 133.985/163.262/213.605 ms

ok so breaking that down for you: each line is one fetch. you get the bytes that came back, the URL, the total ms, and then that little parenthetical — 9.923c/23.074r/213.605d — which is the connect, response, and data breakdown. the letters are literally just c, r, and d for those three. iconic little shorthand, honestly. 😌

then you hit ^C (that's you pressing Ctrl-C, bestie, you're in charge here) and it dumps the statistics at the end. counts of fetches started / completed / failures / timeouts, plus min/avg/max for total, connect, response, and data. it's giving science. it's giving data. it's giving main character energy. 👑

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -count — stop after the specified number of fetches. without this one, http_ping just keeps going forever until you interrupt it. (so like, unhinged behaviour is the default. respect. 🙈)
• -interval — wait the specified number of seconds between fetches. the default is five seconds.
• -quiet — only display the summary info at the end. no per-fetch lines, just the final stats. for when you want the tea without the play-by-play. 🤫
• -proxy — specifies a proxy host and port to use. as in host:port. you know the drill.

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

• http_load(1)
• http_get(1)
• ping(8)

go check the whole friend group, they're all cute. ✨

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Copyright © 1998,1999,2001,2002 by Jef Poskanzer <jef@mail.acme.com>. All rights reserved.

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ok and that's the whole page!! 🎀 no cap, that's literally everything, nothing skipped, nothing invented, we kept the receipts fr fr. this was http_ping(1) from the General Commands Manual, dated 03 April 2002 — she's an elder but she's still slaying. mwah. 💖 🦋 🌸