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From: ashwin@gatech.edu (Ashwin Ram)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: ftp um files
Message-ID: <667@mephisto.edu>
Date: 8 Jan 91 20:01:44 GMT
References: <5575@rex.cs.tulane.edu> <7810@umd5.umd.edu>
Sender: news@gatech.edu
Reply-To: ashwin@cc.gatech.edu (Ashwin Ram)
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing
Lines: 15
In-reply-to: amunn@umd5.umd.edu's message of 7 Jan 91 19:04:45 GMT

In article <7810@umd5.umd.edu> amunn@umd5.umd.edu (Alan Munn) writes:
>   Read the READ.ME files carefully!  Notice that the sample commands for
>   getting files always look like get <DIR/FILE> <filename> e.g. get
>   DO/DOWNLOAD2 download.txt.  For some reason (probably because the
>   machine is running VMS?) you MUST give a local filename as well.

I don't think this is anything to do with VMS.  If you don't specify a local
filename, FTP assumes that the local filename is the same as the remote
filename.  In other words, GET DO/DOWNLOAD2 is the same command as GET
DO/DOWNLOAD2 DO/DOWNLOAD2.  If you don't have a local directory called DO,
FTP will fail to create DO/DOWNLOAD2 on your local machine and give you a
(cryptic) error.  The way around this, as you noted, is to specify the local
filename explicitly.

-- Ashwin.