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From: rick@SEISMO.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  FTP advisory messages
Message-ID: <8709172107.AA16664@beno.CSS.GOV>
Date: Thu, 17-Sep-87 17:07:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: beno.8709172107.AA16664
Posted: Thu Sep 17 17:07:40 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 15:48:44 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 22

The SYST command looks cute but in the real world is useless. 

While I suppose that if you get MVS or VMS or TOPS-20 back from the
SYST command it might be useful, if it returns "UNIX" then you really
haven't gained anything.

The wonderful thing about UNIX is that it runs on almost any hardware.
What I really want to know in this example is the packing (and
possibly byte ordering) of characters in a word. I don't believe that
all Unix implementations are 8 bits = 1 character = 1 byte. I think the
C/70 has a 9 bit byte or something. It runs Unix (I don't have my manuals
with me, but you get the idea)

If SITE works (and I'm told that it does finally work), then you could
do something like "SITE 8BITBYTES" and decide whether to go into binary
mode based on that.


SYST might be useful, but since its constrained to returning official
system types, it just doesn't cut it for UNIX.

--rick