Ftp-WG: NLST vs MLSD

By the way, readers of this list might want to take a look at
C-Kermit 8.0.206:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ckc206.html

(still in Beta) for their own purposes, because it's a useful tool 
for testing and stressing servers.  It offers lots of options and
combinations not supported by other clients, and it lets you watch
what's happening if you tell it to:

  set ftp debug on

As far as I know, it does not violate RFC959 or the current draft
unless you out of your way to make it do so.  Again, the commands
shown in the table:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/newftp.html#table

allow you to force any combination of server-vs-client wildcard
interpretation, NLST, and MLSD, and you can exercise it against any
server.  Thus, for example, it is possible to force it to send a
wildcard as an MLSD argument (e.g. to test whether the server accepts
and interprets it), although it will never do this by default.

Note that this program is not only, or even primarily, an FTP client
so it includes a lot of non-FTP related commands and functions.  Most
FTP commands work "naturally", in the sense that you can give the same
commands at the C-Kermit> prompt that you can give to (say) the Unix
FTP client, but to avoid ambiguity you can prefix any FTP command with
the word "ftp".  Complete documentation of the FTP client is here:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ckermit80.html#ftp

(features new to the Beta version are in red).  A scripting tutorial
(which also illustrates many of the commands) is here:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ftpscripts.html

This version of C-Kermit should be buildable on any Unix platform.

- Frank