V10 B68 problems with ftp

[Steve Fabian]

1/ IIRC, earlier builds allowed "relative path" specification of the
location of FTP.CFG, i.e., ftpcfg=.\FTP.CFG was accepted as a file in the
TCC's startup directory. Current build interprets the path dynamically, and
if it finds no such file in the current directory, it creates an empty one.
This makes using an FTP.CFG file from a portable drive very cumbersome (I
must first CD to the right FTPCFG directory, execute IFTP, and return - my
future work around is an IFTP alias to do that). A better solution would be
to allow specifying the FTP.CFG file using either an environment variable,
or a directory alias. BTW: are directory aliases allowed in .INI files?

2/ If the ftp connection times out, an attempt to perform a new ftp action
performs an implied IFTP in the current directory, with the same issues as
above attempting to locate FTP.CFG. A simple solution for this problem would
be that any successful IFTP command would save the username and password
information; however, this may result in a security compromise.

3/ Attempting to download the content of an ftp site using the command
copy/s/[d-400] ftp:* .
(where copy is an alias : *copy/[!descript.ion]/efgrhv/net) failed to copy
any files. Both DIR and PDIR with similar selection options worked well. I
got my current task done by editing the DIR command output, and downloading
the individual files in a loop.

--
Steve

 

[rconn]

Steve Fábián wrote:

> 1/ IIRC, earlier builds allowed "relative path" specification of the
> location of FTP.CFG, i.e., ftpcfg=.\FTP.CFG was accepted as a file in the
> TCC's startup directory. Current build interprets the path dynamically, and
> if it finds no such file in the current directory, it creates an empty one.
> This makes using an FTP.CFG file from a portable drive very cumbersome (I
> must first CD to the right FTPCFG directory, execute IFTP, and return - my
> future work around is an IFTP alias to do that). A better solution would be
> to allow specifying the FTP.CFG file using either an environment variable,
> or a directory alias. BTW: are directory aliases allowed in .INI files?

No version of TCC/4NT has ever supported relative paths for any
directive in the .INI, and it is not planned for any future version.
(For several architectural reasons which we've discussed in the past
when you've requested this.)

> 2/ If the ftp connection times out, an attempt to perform a new ftp action
> performs an implied IFTP in the current directory, with the same issues as
> above attempting to locate FTP.CFG. A simple solution for this problem would
> be that any successful IFTP command would save the username and password
> information; however, this may result in a security compromise.

A rather MAJOR security compromise!

> 3/ Attempting to download the content of an ftp site using the command
> copy/s/[d-400] ftp:* .
> (where copy is an alias : *copy/[!descript.ion]/efgrhv/net) failed to copy
> any files.

Not reproducible here. But date ranges can be highly problematic on FTP
sites, because the date format returned varies wildly (and is sometimes
missing altogether).

Rex Conn
JP Software