simpleftp(1)
NAME
simpleftp - Rudimentary FTP client
SYNOPSIS
simpleftp url [...]
DESCRIPTION
simpleftp is a Perl script script that provides basic sup
port for fetching files with FTP in a batch oriented fash
ion. It takes one or more FTP URLS on the command line.
The file(s) will be retrieved from the remote server and
placed in the current directory with the same basename as
on the remote; e.g., "ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CON
FIG/active.gz" is stored as active.gz in the current
directory.
BUGS
simpleftp is an extremely poor substitute for more com
plete programs like the freely available wget or ncftp
utilities. It was written only to provide elementary sup
port in INN for non-interactive fetching of the files in
<ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/> without requiring
administrators to install yet another package. Its short
comings as a general purpose program are too numerous to
mention, but one that stands out is that simpleftp does
not understand the complete syntax of URLs, only the host
name and pathname parts -- it will not understand user
name, password, port or parameter strings.
The Perl libraries that it uses have the advantage of com
ing with Perl, even older versions of Perl, but are not
"-w" safe and do not work nearly as well as Net::FTP.
HISTORY
Tossed off by David C Lawrence <tale@isc.org> for Inter
NetNews.
$Id: simpleftp.1,v 1.3 2003/04/03 00:54:02 rra Exp $