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From: ado@BBN.COM (Buz Owen)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Remote "cat" during ftp connection
Message-ID: <8911180246.AA00936@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 18 Nov 89 01:53:19 GMT
References: <4579@jjmhome.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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There is no official protocol feature in ftp to support execution of arbitrary
commands on the server -- although there has occasionally been, in the past, an
XCMD command, in various Unix ftp servers.  One could enter it using the quote
feature of the ftp user process, and the server would run the command supplied,
and return the output as a multiline reply.  (This is one way to impliment the
LIST command under Unix, using "ls -l" as the command.) I haven't seen XCMD in
any ftp server I've used recently -- it is probably considered unsafe.  If
"cat" is all you want to do, try RETRieving to local filename /dev/tty or
equivalent, or to |more or |page (or |cat) if you are on a bsd based system.