> The patch is probably trivial - however I would still like some
> verification.
> Would it be correct to call self.close() when fp.read returns ''? In
> case self.length is not present, I don't see a way around this anyway.
> When it is present, and fp.read returns '', how should we go about
> that? We can either return less data, or raise an exception to
> indicate that the connection terminated prematurely.

It's probably better to return less data. No need to break user programs
when they download from a slightly misbehaved Web site.

The patch should include some kind of unit test, if possible. See
Lib/test/test_httplib.py.