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From: ken@csis.dit.csiro.au (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: what does ascii ftp do to a binary file?
Message-ID: <1990Dec10.024340.15467@csis.dit.csiro.au>
Date: 10 Dec 90 02:43:40 GMT
References: <1990Dec6.194811.7643@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <1990Dec7.085559.1537@Think.COM>
Organization: CSIRO Division of Information Technology
Lines: 12

In article <1990Dec7.085559.1537@Think.COM>:
>[A good explanation of the transformations used in ftp]
>Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

Also note that one is not guaranteed that a binary file will be read
properly while in ascii mode on the SENDING machine.  Simtel20, a
TOPS-20 machine, for example, would not allow you to fetch a binary
file in ascii mode.  So it may not be be possible to recover the file
intact even after cleaning.

Having said that, I confess to using binary mode for all files when I
know the other machine is a Unix box, like mine.