somewhat OT: http_proxy format (was: tor controller hangs / doesn't reply)

[Drake Wilson]

Quoth Scott Bennett <bennett at cs.niu.edu>, on 2009-06-03 08:17:10 -0500,
providing neither a References nor an In-Reply-To header:
>      On Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:01:09 -0400 Sambuddho Chakravarty
> <sc2516 at columbia.edu> top-posted (grrr...):
> >I am using :-
> >
> > http_proxy=http://localhost:8118
> >
>      Well, you probably need to fix that first.  Both ftp_proxy and
> http_proxy are supposed to be set to the *proxy*, not to a URL.  (See
> fetch(3) for more information.)

I believe that this idea does not reflect current practice, at least
on GNU/Linux systems, and that Sambuddho's usage is correct for Bourne
shell, modulo a possibly-missing "export" command.  (Not that current
practice is particularly well-defined in this case.)