Carl Ponder wrote:
I just started using "wget" to recursively fetch directories, and was
disappointed to find that it didn't get files like ".profile" that start
with ".".
Mauro Tortonesi's response:
this is a very interesting point, but the patch you mentioned above uses the
LIST -a FTP command, which AFAIK is not supported by all FTP servers.
Hey -- how about making the "-a" the default, then add a command-line
switch that supresses "-a" for servers it won't work with? Then document
that the supression-switch also means that dot-files may not transfer.
Someone may come up with a more robust approach in the future, in which
case the supression-switch can be deprecated from the tool.
My goal is to recursively copy a whole directory-tree from a remote system,
which includes all the files and preserves their executable/nonexecutable
state. I also want some measure of security that the remote files not have
to be world-readable, and I want to authenticate at the local machine, not
the remote machine. Further, I want to be able to use it inside a script.
So far each of ftp, ncftp, rftp, rcp, scp and others fail in some way or
other. So "wget" does all the things I list, plus some other things I've
found very useful, but it invents a new way to mess up by not copying the
"." files. It's still the best, though, and I've come to depend on it.
Thanks,
Carl Ponder
