-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 I have a question: why do we attempt to generate absolute paths and such and CWD to those, instead of just doing the portable string-of-CWDs to get where we need to be? Technically, we can violate the RFCs (specifically, RFC 1738, which defines the ftp URL scheme in terms of a string of CWDs from the starting directory), if the FTP server starts us out in a directory other than /, and it makes OS portability easier. Obviously, interpreting the output of LIST will never be generally portable, but it seems like restricting our OS awareness to listings only can save us headaches later (and some code, to boot). It can also save us doing SYST and PWD at the beginning, if we don't have to interpret listings.
Speaking of interpreting LIST output, a new FTP Extensions RFC 3659, has been added to update RFC 959, as of March of this year. It adds a couple new listing commands (MLST and MLSD) with well-defined output. It also defines officially a couple commands which are apparently common extensions, SIZE and MDTM, and modifies the definition of REST (also to bring FTP in line with common extensions). It also provides a way for servers to advertise that they use traditional Unix-like pathnames. - -- Micah J. Cowan Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer... http://micah.cowan.name/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGtBrl7M8hyUobTrERCP7gAJ9EOGKWL5Ho1hd8GgypK0Nwpr3+vgCcDNqN 51+WMpcHy56s+iq/ECBtJHk= =fAwz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
