Re: zftp bit of a dark horse?

["Peter A. Castro" <doctor@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, zzapper wrote:

> Hi,

Greetings, zapper,
  Long time no see :)

> Why does zftp appear to be bit of a dark horse?
>
> In Cygwin it doesn't seem to be installed by default (although files are
> there). I Googled for tutorials or example scripts and got very few hits.

"installed" is a rather incorrect term to use.  zftp, like all the other
neat features of zsh, are "built" and packaged as part of the Cygwin
distribution of zsh.  zftp is "installed" along with the rest of zsh.
Like many features of zsh, zftp simply isn't setup as "available" by
default for Cygwin.  This is done on purpose.  Feature bloat is something
I truely hate.  Turning on features by default qualifies as such in my
book.  It's often trivial to enable such features (just an autoload
away), but there's always a cost exacted by doing so.  Often that cost is
the startup speed of the shell.  I'd much rather have only a few features
(ie: those most likely used by all) to be enable by default and let the
user decide what s/he wants there after.  In the case of Windows, shell
startup is already pretty slow.  I'd rather let the user decide what
other features are worth a little more startup wait.

> Is it a relatively new feature? I've been looking for a really flexible
> FTP client for ages, can't tell if zftp would fit the bill

As others have already commented, it's not all that new a feature.  It
does have it's share of features/problems.  But then so does FTP itself.
The thing I really truely like about zftp is that it is *scriptable*.
Writing pure FTP scripts is a real pain in the arse.  Writing scipts to
use zftp, by contrast, is more sensible and you can actually code some
logic into the script to make decisions depending on what's at the remote
site.  Try doing that with the classic FTP client.

I did consider providing a fully customized set of .z* files but it would
really only reflect my tastes in environment.  Since shell enviornments
are truely a personal thing, I decided a minimalist approach was best.
There's always the info and man pages as well as some other doc.  Anyone
picking up a new shell would likely start there and read about the
wonders of the shell.

Feel free to contribute more complex .z* files.  I'm happy to host them
on my website, at least for the Cygwin distribution, if you like.

> Comment?
>
> zzapper (vim, cygwin, wiki & zsh)
> --
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-- 
Peter A. Castro <doctor@xxxxxxxxxxxx> or <Peter.Castro@xxxxxxxxxx>
	"Cats are just autistic Dogs" -- Dr. Tony Attwood