FTP and command-line multiple downloads

[Yar Tikhiy]

On Sat, Feb 15, 2003 at 05:46:37PM +0300, Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 03:37:49PM -0800, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 03:34:06PM -0800, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> > > Since upgrading bento to running 5.0, it appears that I can no longer
> > > download multiple files from a FTP server by specifying a glob pattern
> > > on the command-line:
> > > 
> > > e.g.
> > > 
> > > /usr/bin/ftp -4a ftp://snapshots.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/alpha/5-LATEST/base/base.\?\?
> > 
> > This appears to work (as it used to) under 4.x.
> 
> As far as I can see, this is a client-side problem of CURRENT's
> ftp(1).  FreeBSD ftp(1) was completely replaced with "lukemftp,"
> ftp client from NetBSD, in CURRENT a year ago.  The commit message
> was promising:
> 
> 	...Lukemftp supports most of the previous features of FreeBSD
> 	ftp, but has been better maintained and includes new features.
> 
> Unfortunately, this particular feature doesn't fall into that most;
> "lukemftp" can't seem to detect a glob pattern on the command line.

I must admit that I overlooked this feature in lukemftp.  In fact,
lukemftp can download multiple files specified as a wildcard via ftp.
However, lukemftp accepts wildcards only in the "classic" ftp file
specification, i.e., host:path/file, and not in URLs.

Do you think the ability to use command-line wildcards should be
extended to URLs as well?  Luke Mewburn may be convinced to do that
in his ftp client.  Technically, the task is as easy as removing a
single logical subexpression from an "if" statement.

-- 
Yar