Re: zftp annoyance

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>]

Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> I'm using zftp to transfer things back and forth from a server.
> Unfortunately, every time the connection times out and zftp reconnects
> the transfer type is reverting to ASCII. Surely it ought to be restoring
> the transfer type when it reconnects?
> 
> This may just be something related to the particular ftp server - I
> normally use ncftp because I would normally get one file and quit so I'm
> not hugely familiar with zftp. Is it possible to make binary the default
> transfer type for zftp?

The zftp core code will switch to binary if the remote server claims to be
UNIX with 8-bit characters.  (Actually it won't do this until you are
logged in, because some servers won't let you, but this shouldn't be a
problem.)

Look and see if $ZFTP_SYSTEM contains "UNIX Type: L8"; if not, it won't
happen automatically.

It should be easy to adapt the function suite to remember this.  It would
be even easier to make binary the default:  just doctor zfopen and zfanon
and put `zftype binary' at the end.  Hooks aren't currently implemented,
but that could be done.

Making zfget support [user@]host:file and URL notation for one-off
retrievals is another useful, and relatively simple, possibility.  I
haven't been doing much with zftp recently.

My own bugbear is that interrupt handling is very bad.  I was hoping
someone else would get fed up with this and fix it.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>                  Software Engineer
CSR Ltd., Unit 300, Science Park, Milton Road,
Cambridge, CB4 0XL, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 392070


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