Well, the subject line makes it clear from the start: I have a need to keep track of new or updated versions of TAR archives across many http only sites.

Doing this using FTP is no problem and I get only the newest files - if any. However, FTP provides .listing files which can be scanned by scripts, but http sites are a different story. I don't want to write for every http site a specialized script to keep track of changes. Rather, I opt for a set of functions which can be controlled by parameters doing the searching.

Has anybody a pointer where to look?

Regards, Frans.