[gollem] Fwd: [cvs] commit: horde/lib/VFS ftp.php

Eric Rostetter eric.rostetter@physics.utexas.edu
Tue, 24 Sep 2002 18:16:20 -0500


Quoting Eric Rostetter <eric.rostetter@physics.utexas.edu>:

> Also, can anyone confirm is "list -al" works on most/all unix ftp servers?
> It does works for all unix servers I know of, but does not work for
> most OpenVMS servers, for example, so I'm not sure how standard it is.

Following up my own post, it appears this is "bad form".  A quick look on
the internet returns stuff like:

---
Traditional UNIX FTP servers allow the LIST parameter to name several files. For
example, the parameter *.ps *.ps.gz refers to every file in the current
directory whose name ends with .ps or .ps.gz. The server returns information
about each regular file and the contents of each directory, in a format even
more difficult to parse than the usual /bin/ls format.

Traditional UNIX FTP servers also allow the LIST parameter to specify options
for the UNIX /bin/ls program. For example, the parameter -t *.c produces a list
of .c files, sorted in decreasing order of modification time.

High-quality clients do not attempt to use these features. File selection and
sorting are user-interface features that can and should be handled by the client. 
---

So, I'll leave the patch in place for now, until I can find another way to
do it better, or test/conditionalize it better, or someone complains.

-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

"Can you hear me now? ... Good!"
"Can you hear me now? ... Good!"