9fans archive / 2000 / 08 / 9 /    prev next

From: boyd.roberts@ca-...
Subject: [9fans] Re: ftpfs
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 12:23:24 +0200



hmm my reply seems have been truncated.  here it is again:

i made a deliberate decision when i wrote ftpnfs (ie. ftpfs glued onto
NFS.  it was not pretty, but it did work.  re-writing the kernel XDR was
ghastly)
to use the minimal number of ftp commands possible, in this
way it would interoperate with more systems without code changes.

with each new system the code has to be changed if you use SYST.
i didn't use SYST.

to determine if something was a directory i'd cd into it and if that
succeeded it was a directory.  if it didn't it was a file or directory you
couldn't access (these i presented as files), so you didn't really care.

it's LIST or NLIST (i forget which one) gives human readable output
which is recomended not to be used by programs.  of course my
approach had the disadvantage that you didn't know the size of
the file until you'd read or written it.  my reasoning was that you probably
knew what you were looking for and would be selective in what you
opened for read.

how does it go?  be conservative in what you send and liberal in
what you accept.

does that clear things up?