Under certain conditions (I'm trying to open a
Shoutcast stream), I wind up with the following
exception from httplib:

 Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/devel/lib/python2.4/threading.py", line
442, in __bootstrap
    self.run()
  File "avalanche.py", line 86, in run
    streamData = streamResponse.read(256)
  File "/home/devel/lib/python2.4/httplib.py", line
478, in read
    self.length -= len(s)
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -=: 'str'
and 'int'

Normally, self.length has many shields of the form "if
self.length is None:"; however, self.length gets
initialize to _UNKNOWN which is the string "UNKNOWN"
rather than None.  As such, all of the shields are useless.

Am I using a deprecated library or something?  I'm
really surprised no one else has bumped into this.

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I did bump into the same problem.
Apparently when I got HTTP/0.9 connection, self.length is
not initialized.
Inserting a line into l.362 at httplib.py (v2.4) seems to
solve this problem. I will also post a patch:

        if self.version == 9:
            self.chunked = 0
            self.will_close = 1
            self.msg = HTTPMessage(StringIO())
+            self.length = None
            return

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Thanks for the report! This is fixed as of Lib/httplib.py
r1.95, r1.94.2.1.