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11.2 Commands interpreted by ftp

When ftp is awaiting commands from the user, a prompt is displayed. The default string is ‘ftp>’, but it can been changed with a command line option, perhaps to enhance uniqueness while recording a session.

Be aware that correct execution of many commands depends upon a proper behavior of the remote server. The following commands are recognized by ftp itself. Command names can be abbreviated to the shortest unique string with identical beginning.

! [command [args]]

Invoke an interactive shell on the local machine. If there are arguments, the first is taken to be a command to execute directly, with the rest of the arguments as its arguments.

$ macro-name [args]

Execute the macro macro-name that was defined with the macdef command. Arguments are passed to the macro unglobbed.

account [passwd]

Supply a supplemental password required by a remote system for access to resources, once a login has been successfully completed. If no argument is included, the user will be prompted for an account password in non-echoing input mode.

append local-file [remote-file]

Append a local file to a file on the remote machine. If remote-file is left unspecified, the local file name is used in naming the remote file after being altered by any ntrans or nmap setting. File transfer uses the current settings for type, format, mode, and structure.

ascii

Set the file transfer type to network ASCII. This is the default type, except when two unices are communicating.

bell

Arrange that a bell be sounded after each file transfer command is completed.

binary

Set the file transfer type to support binary image transfer. This transfer type is selected during initial handshake, should the client on a Unix system recognize that the server is also running on a Unix system.

bye

quit

Terminate the FTP session with the remote server and exit ftp. An end of file will also terminate the session and exit.

case

Toggle the remote computer’s use of letter case mapping during mget commands. When case is ‘on’, a file name at the remote site whose every letter appear in upper case, will be renamed in such a way that all letters are changed to lower case for a local copy of the same file. The default setting is ‘off’,

cd remote-directory

Change the working directory on the remote machine to remote-directory.

cdup

Change the remote machine’s working directory to the parent of the current working directory.

chmod mode file-name

Change the access permission of the file file-name on the remote system to mode.

close

disconnect

Terminate the FTP session with the present remote server, and return to the command interpreter. Any defined macros are erased.

cr

Toggle carriage return stripping during ASCII type file retrieval. Records are denoted by a carriage return/linefeed sequence during ASCII type file transfer. When cr is ‘on’ (the default), carriage returns are stripped from this sequence to conform with the UNIX single linefeed record delimiter. Records on non-UNIX remote systems may contain single linefeeds; when an ASCII type transfer is made, these linefeeds may be distinguished from a record delimiter only when cr is ‘off’.

delete remote-file

Delete the file remote-file on the remote machine.

debug [debug-value]

Toggle debugging mode. If an optional debug-value is specified it is used to set the debugging level. When debugging is on, ftp prints each command sent to the remote machine, preceded by the string ‘-->’.

dir [remote-directory] [local-file]

Print a listing of the contents in the directory remote-directory, and, optionally, place the output in local-file. If interactive prompting is set, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is the intended local file to receive output. If no directory is specified, the current working directory on the remote machine is used. If no local file is specified, or if local-file is a dash ‘-’, then output is displayed on the terminal.

epsv4

Toggle the use of EPSV/EPRT for IPv4 addressing. Default is off.

form format

Set the file transfer form to format. The only supported format is ‘non-print’.

get remote-file [local-file]

recv remote-file [local-file]

Retrieve the remote-file and store it on the local machine. If a local file name is not specified, the local copy is given the same name as is stated for the remote original, subject to alteration by the current case, ntrans, and nmap settings. The current settings for type, form, mode, and structure are effective during file transfer.

glob

Toggle file name expansion for mdelete, mget, and mput. If globbing is turned off with glob, the file name arguments are taken literally and are not expanded. Globbing for mput is done as in csh syntax. For mdelete and mget, each remote file name is expanded separately on the remote machine and the lists are not merged. Expansion of a directory name is likely to be different from expansion of the name of an ordinary file: the exact result depends on the remote operating system and on the FTP server, and can be previewed by issuing ‘mls remote-files -’.

Note: mget and mput are not meant to transfer entire directory subtrees of files. That can be achieved by transferring an already created tar or cpio archive of the subtree, then making certain that ftp uses binary mode.

hash [size]

In the absence of an argument, toggle the state of hash-sign (‘#’) printing after each transferred data block. The optional argument selects the size of data blocks, and unconditionally activates printing. The default size is 1024 bytes. For convenience, the size can be written with postfix multipliers ’k’, ’K’, ’m’, ’M’, and ’g’, ’G’, to specify kilobytes, Megabytes, and Gigabytes, respectively.

help [command]

? [command]

Print an informative message about the meaning of command. If no argument is given, ftp prints a list of the known commands.

idle [seconds]

Set the inactivity timer on the remote server to seconds seconds. If seconds is omitted, the current inactivity timer is printed.

ipv4

Select IPv4 as the only addressing scheme.

ipv6

Select IPv6 as the only addressing scheme.

ipany

Allow IPv4 as well as IPv6 addressing.

lcd [directory]

Change the working directory on the local machine. If no directory is specified, the user’s home directory is used.

lpwd

Print the name of the current working directory on the local machine.

ls [remote-directory] [local-file]

Print a listing of the contents of a directory on the remote machine. The listing includes any system-dependent information that the server chooses to include; for example, most UNIX systems will produce output like the command ls -l does. Use nlist for a simple file listing.

If remote-directory is left unspecified, the current working directory is used. With interactive prompting set, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the intended local file for storing output. Should no local file be specified, or if local-file is a dash ‘-’, then output is sent to the terminal.

macdef macro-name

Define a macro called macro-name, with subsequent lines as the macro definition. A null line (consecutive newline characters in a file, or carriage returns at a terminal) terminates macro input mode. There is a limit of 16 macros and a total of 4096 characters shared by all defined macros. Only the first eight characters in macro-name are significant when determining which macro to execute. Macros remain defined until a close command is executed.

The macro processor interprets ‘$’ and ‘\’ as special characters. A ‘$’ followed by a number (one or more digits) is replaced by the corresponding argument on the macro’s invocation command line. A ‘$’ followed by the letter ‘i’ tells the macro processor that the macro is to perform a loop. On the first pass, ‘$i’ is replaced by the first argument on the macro’s invocation command line, while on the second pass it is replaced by the second argument, and so forth. Iteration proceeds until all arguments have been consumed.

A backslash ‘\’ followed by any character is replaced by that character. Use the backslash ‘\’ to prevent special treatment of the dollar sign ‘$’, as was just explained.

A macro can execute a macro, allowing recursion. In order to avoid exhausting the stack and thus crashing ftp, the nesting depth of macro execution is limited to a compile time constant.

mdelete [remote-files]

Delete all remote-files on the remote machine.

mdir remote-files local-file

Like dir, except multiple remote files may be specified. If interactive prompting is on, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the intended local file for storing any output from mdir.

mget remote-files

Expand the remote-files on the remote machine and execute a get for each file name thus produced. Resulting file names will then be processed according to case, ntrans, and nmap settings. Files are transferred to the local working directory, which can be changed with lcd directory; new local directories can be created with ! mkdir directory.

mkdir directory-name

Make a directory on the remote machine.

mls remote-files local-file

Like nlist, except multiple remote files may be specified, and the local-file must be specified. If interactive prompting is on, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is the intended local file for storing output. A dash ‘-’ is accepted as last argument without check!

mode [mode-name]

Set the file transfer mode to mode-name. The default mode is ‘stream’, and it is also the only implemented mode.

modtime file-name

Show the last modification time of the file on the remote machine.

mput local-files

Consider the arguments to be local names and expand any wild card. Execute a put for each file in the resulting list. The remote file names are then computed by use of ntrans and nmap settings.

newer file-name

Get the file only if the modification time of the remote file is more recent than the file on the current system. If the file does not exist on the current system, the remote file is considered newer. In other respects, this command is identical to get.

nlist [remote-directory] [local-file]

Print a list of the files in a directory on the remote machine. If remote-directory is left unspecified, the current working directory is used. If interactive prompting is on, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is the intended local file for storing output. If no local file is specified, or if local-file is ‘-’, the output is sent to the terminal.

nmap [inpattern outpattern]

Set or unset the file name mapping mechanism. If no arguments are specified, the file name mapping mechanism is unset. Name mapping is applied during mput and put commands issued without a specified remote target filename. It as also applied to local file names during mget and get commands issued without local target file name. This command is useful when connecting to a non-UNIX remote computer with different file naming conventions or practices.

The mapping follows the pattern set by inpattern and outpattern. The template inpattern is used on incoming filenames (which may have already been processed according to the ntrans and case settings). Variable templating is accomplished by including the sequences ‘$1’, ‘$2’, …, ‘$9’ in inpattern. Use ‘\’ to prevent this special treatment of the character ‘$’. All other characters are treated literally, and must be matched in a file name for inpattern to bind substrings to variables.

For example, take a pattern ‘$1.$2’ and a file name mydata.data. Then ‘$1’ would have the value ‘mydata’, and ‘$2’ would be ‘data’.

outpattern determines the final file name. The sequences ‘$1’ to ‘$9’ are replaced by any values bound to them by inpattern. A special sequence ‘$0’ always contains the original filename. In addition, a bracketted sequence ‘[seq1,seq2]’ expands to seq1 if seq1 contains a non-empty string, and expands to seq2 otherwise. For example, the command

nmap $1.$2.$3 [$1,$2].[$2,file]

would yield the output file name myfile.data for input names myfile.data and myfile.data.old, but produces myfile.file from the input myfile, and myfile.myfile from .myfile.

Spaces may be included in outpattern, but are easily removed:

nmap $1 |sed "s/ *$//" > $1

Use a backslash ‘\’ to escape the characters ‘$’, ‘[’, ‘]’, and ‘,’.

ntrans [inchars [outchars]]

Set or unset the filename character translation mechanism. If no arguments are specified, the filename character translation mechanism is unset. If arguments are specified, characters in remote filenames are translated during mput commands and put commands issued without a specified remote target filename. If arguments are specified, characters in local filenames are translated during mget commands and get commands issued without a specified local target filename. This command is useful when connecting to a non-UNIX remote computer with different file naming conventions or practices.

Characters in a filename matching a character in inchars are replaced with the corresponding character in outchars. If the character’s position in inchars is longer than the length of outchars, the character is deleted from the file name.

open host [port]

open user@host [port]

Establish a connection to the specified FTP server at host. An optional port number may be supplied, in which case, ftp will attempt to contact the server at that specific TCP port. If the autologin option is on (is so by default), ftp will also attempt to automatically log the user in to the FTP server.

The second form of invocation sets the remote user name to user, which otherwise is taken as identical to the user identity owning the local session.

passive

Toggle passive mode. If passive mode is turned on (default is off), the ftp client will send a PASV command for all data connections instead of the usual PORT command. The PASV command requests that the remote server open a port for the data connection and return the address of that port. The remote server listens on that port and the client connects to it. When using the more traditional PORT command, the client listens on a port and sends that address to the remote server, who connects back to it. Passive mode is useful when using ftp through a gateway router or host that controls the directionality of traffic. (Note that though ftp servers are required to support the PASV command by RFC 1123, some do not.) If epsv4 has been set to on, the client will attempt EPSV before PASV for IPv4. As a last resort LPSV is attempted. With IPv6 only EPSV and LPSV are possible.

prompt

Toggle interactive prompting. Interactive prompting occurs during multiple file transfers to allow the user to selectively retrieve or store files. If prompting is turned off (default is on), any mget or mput will transfer all files, and any mdelete will delete all files.

proxy ftp-command

Execute an ftp command on a secondary control connection. This command allows simultaneous connection to two remote FTP servers for transferring files between the two servers. The first proxy command should be open, to establish the secondary control connection. Enter the command proxy ? to see other commands usable for the secondary connection. The following commands behave differently when prefaced by proxy: open will not define new macros during the auto-login process, close will not erase existing macro definitions, get and mget transfer files from the host on the primary control connection to the host on the secondary control connection, and put, mput, and append transfer files from the host on the secondary control connection to the host on the primary control connection.

Note that the protocol command PASV must be understood by the server on the secondary control connection for this kind of file transfer to succeed.

put local-file [remote-file]

send local-file [remote-file]

Store a local file on the remote machine. If remote-file is left unspecified, the local file name is used after processing according to any ntrans or nmap settings in naming the remote file. File transfer uses the current settings for type, format, mode, and structure.

pwd

Print the name of the current working directory on the remote machine.

quote arg…

The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote FTP server.

reget remote-file [local-file]

reget acts like get, except that if local-file exists and is smaller than remote-file, then local-file is presumed to be a partially transferred copy of remote-file and the transfer is continued from the apparent point of failure. This command is useful when transferring very large files over networks that are prone to dropping connections.

rhelp [command-name]

Request help from the remote FTP server. If command-name is specified it is passed to the server as well.

rstatus [file-name]

With no arguments, show status of remote machine. If filename is specified, show status of file-name on remote machine.

rename [from] [to]

Rename the file from on the remote machine as to. Name mapping takes effect without to.

reset

Clear reply queue. This command re-synchronizes command/reply sequencing with the remote FTP server. Resynchronization may be necessary following a violation of the FTP protocol by the remote server.

restart marker

Restart the immediately following get or put at the indicated marker. On UNIX systems, marker is usually a byte offset into the file.

rmdir directory-name

Delete a directory on the remote machine.

runique

Toggle the storing of files on the local system with unique filenames. If a file already exists with a name equal to the inteded local file name for a get or mget command, then a string ‘.1’ is appended to the name. If the resulting name matches another existing file, ‘.2’ is appended to the original name. If this process continues up to ‘.99’, an error message is printed, and the transfer does not take place. The generated unique filename will be reported. Note that runique will not affect local files generated from a shell command. The default value is off.

sendport

Toggle the use of PORT commands. By default, ftp will attempt to use a PORT command when establishing a connection for each data transfer. The use of PORT commands can prevent delays when performing multiple file transfers. If the PORT command fails, ftp will use the default data port. When the use of PORT commands is disabled, no attempt will be made to use PORT commands for each data transfer. This is useful for certain FTP implementations which do ignore PORT commands but, incorrectly, indicate they’ve been accepted.

site arg…

The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote FTP server as a SITE command.

size file-name

Return size of file-name on remote machine.

status

Show the current status of ftp.

struct [struct-name]

Set the file transfer structure to struct-name. By default ‘file’ structure is used, which also is the only supported value.

sunique

Toggle storing of files on remote machine under unique file names. Remote FTP server must support FTP protocol STOU command for successful completion. The remote server will report unique name. Default value is off.

system

Show the type of operating system running on the remote machine.

tenex

Set the file transfer type to that needed to talk to TENEX machines.

trace

Toggle packet tracing (feature is not implemented).

type [type-name]

Set the file transfer type to type-name. If no type is specified, the current type is printed. The recognized type names are ‘ascii’, ‘binary’, ‘ebcdic’, ‘image’, and ‘tenex’. The default type is network ASCII.

umask [newmask]

Set the default umask on the remote server to newmask. If newmask is omitted, the current umask is printed.

user user-name [password] [account]

Identify yourself to the remote FTP server. If the password is not specified and the server requires it, ftp will prompt the user for it (after disabling local echo). If an account field is not specified, and the FTP server requires it, the user will be prompted for it. If an account field is specified, an account command will be relayed to the remote server after the login sequence is completed if the remote server did not require it for logging in. Unless ftp is invoked with auto-login disabled, this process is done automatically on initial connection to the FTP server.

verbose

Toggle verbose mode. In verbose mode, all responses from the FTP server are displayed to the user. In addition, if verbose is on, when a file transfer completes, statistics regarding the efficiency of the transfer are reported. By default, verbose is on.

Command arguments which have embedded spaces may be inclosed within citation characters ‘"’.