pid-recursive in options file, bug or feature?

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Thu May 4 14:12:59 BST 2017, Doug Faunt wrote: 

> I hope that signature is gone.

Yes it is... Many thanks...(though, TBH, I can't figure out why 
you need to share with the rest of the world your postcode 
and telephone number...LOL).

> Here's an example of not working with pidrecursive in options file 
> and then working after removal.

 Why must you have "pidrecursive 1" inside your options file? 
The "--pid-recersive" switch was intended to be only used in 
conjuction with brand/series PIDs; b05nt1vb is just an episode PID, 
so I'd say what you get is to be expected...
In fact, if you manually try to load 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05nt1vb/episodes/player?page=1

in a browser, you'll get a "Sorry, that page was not found" error...

 With the XML feeds now permanently removed, GiP 3.00 
relies only to webscraping to parse brand/series PIDs. In fact, 
recursive downloading was unavailable after the removal of XML 
feeds, since the JSON ones do not provide such function, but 
was added (through XML page parsing) in the following commit: 

https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/commit/1032f22

 If, while the XML feeds were still alive, GiP 2.99- would not error out 
when fed an episode PID with "pidrecursive 1" present inside options, 
then I'd say that was a "bugged" behaviour, 
whereas the current one is "normal" 

Regards.