NWE Help: Remote: Ftp: Command Line FTP: Commands

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Command line FTP is often confusing and strange because some commands work as they regularly do, while others don't. Some simple points will help ease thsi confusion:

The commands operate on the local and the remote system, so you have to specify the local system using the lowercase letter "L" or using an exclamation point "!".
These commands are for UNIX (and flavors of UNIX, like Solaris and Linux). The commands are basically the same for Windows-DOS, but there are some difference and we have some of those noted.
You can use wildcards. A "*" means all and will get everything in that directory. Or, the "*" or question marks stand for anything wild in that slot - so, if you wanted all of the text (.txt) files with an April 2004 date in the year, month, day format, you would use 200404??.txt
Check other command-line commands for help, or email help with questions.

All of the commands below are for UNIX based systems, unless they specifically note that they are for DOS alone or for both DOS and UNIX.

Command	Explanation
ls	Means list - shows the files on the remote system
!ls	The ! tells this command to list the files on the local system.
dir	DOS - Lists the directory contents
!dir	DOS - Lists the directory contents on the local system
cd	Changes the directory on the remote system. In UNIX, this command is followed by the path to the directory using slashes. For instance, if I wanted to switch to the my public_html directory and then to a subdirectory within that, the command would be: cd public_html/research/ In DOS, cd is the same way unless you switch drive letters as you would if you were in the C drive and needed to access the A drive. In those cases, the command looks like this: cd a:/
lcd	Changes the directory on the local system
put filename	This puts the file named "filename" from the local system onto the remote system.
get filename	This gets the file named "filename" from the remote system and puts it on the local system.
mput file1 file2	This puts multiple files, in this case file1 and file2, from the local system onto the remote system. To put an entire directory, use: mput * You can also put all of the
mget file1 file2	This gets multiple files from the remote system and puts them on the local sytem. As with mput, you can also use wildcards to get multiple files.