# Gopher Simple Hacks
This file will grow and change as I document lessons I learn and find better ways to organize it.

Last updated 2022-02-26 - LeoEC

## Test a gopher server and/or selector without a client
This is the single most useful technique for figuring out what is wrong with a server parsing its index.gph (geomyidae), .link and .cap (gopherd UofMinnesota and many work-alikes) and generally to see the format you are dealing with if programatically parsing gopher pages/selectors.  For all selector types it lets you view the page without any interpretation from the client as well.

### Note: [] contain text values you provide, <> represents a key you press, and {} represents a result or response.  "$ " represents the command line prompt which could look different to you depending on your system.

	$ nc [gopher.server.name] 70
	<enter/return>
		{gopher server will return the root directory selector}
	[/name_you_selector]<enter/return>
		{gopher server will return the selector you requested}

	Of course, if you have a big fancy *nix system around you'll possibly
also have the superpowerful "curl" command line tool.  That works too like:
	$ curl gopher://[gopher.server.name]
		<gopher server will return the raw text of the selector you requested>

While there are many other tools out there that could be employed to duplicate this functionality, I'll mention one more, just in case you have it and none of the others; telnet.
$ telnet [gopher.server.name]
<ender/return>
	<gopher