Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ziploc!eps From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: Viewing text files on FTP Summary: no can do Message-ID: <248@toaster.SFSU.EDU> Date: 11 Jan 90 07:04:59 GMT References: <3510@hub.UUCP> <1990Jan11.001956.27910@lth.se> Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) Organization: San Francisco State University Lines: 23 In article <3510@hub.UUCP> 6600zeek@hub.UUCP (Josh Pritikin) writes: >Is there a way to read files on FTP without 'get'ting them first? Can I >activate vi and call up a remote file? -- Thanks The referenced articles both mention the use of pipes with the get command--but they do not answer the question. You are still _get_ting (RETRing) the file, and it's no less expensive than getting to a local disk file. (If I see a README file that's a few hundred bytes, I may direct output to my terminal, but that's about it. A really nice feature of the TOPS-20 and recent ("version 5") UNIX FTP servers is the ability to say STAT pattern to perform the equivalent of LIST pattern but with output sent over the control connection. It's MUCH faster for short listings.) We use "remote" files all the time--but with NFS mounts rather than FTP. This works pretty well between machines under the same administrative control; it is not a replacement for anonymous FTP because it lacks certain security auditing features (among other things). But it does let you "vi" (or whatever) files. -=EPS=-