On Sat, 13 Dec 2014 08:41:05 -0800, Charles Mills wrote:
>
>I was unable to get cp to work -- or so I thought. I would run cp from
>BPXBATCH and simultaneously use WS_FTP to observe the results. 
>    ...
>FWIW, in the next jobstep I pax -wvf the parent folder and these members
>show up in the pax archive.
>
>Does anyone have some insight into this mystery?
> 
(I'm making some of the following up as I go along ...)

o Generally, Internet standards specify only the communication protocol,
  not the interaction of the client with the programmer.

o FTP is not designed as a scriptable protocol.  In particular, the
  format of the LIST command is unspecified or specified as
  implementation dependent.

So, GUI FTP clients have grammars of the syntaxes of the replies to
LIST for various systems they support.  They issue the SYST command
to identify the system, then the LIST command to get a list of files
which they parse according to their understanding of the server system.

Even worse, on z/OS when the current directory is identified as a DSN
prefix, the reply to LIST is the output of IDCAMS LISTDS; when the
directory is a UNIX directory the reply is the output of "ls -l".

Still worse, regardless of the directory state and the format of the reply
to LIST, z/OS returns "MVS" as the reply to SYST.  What's poor WS_FTP
to do?  It probably presumes the Classic format.

Remember the conclusion to Samuel Johnson's politically incorrect
(nowadays) aphorism, that it iss surprising not that it is done well,
but that it is done at all.

-- gil

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

Reply via email to