zftp bit of a dark horse?

zftp bit of a dark horse?

[zzapper]

Hi,

Why does zftp appear to be bit of a dark horse?

In Cygwin it doesn't seem to be installed by default (although files are there). I Googled for
tutorials or example scripts and got very few hits.

Is it a relatively new feature? I've been looking for a really flexible FTP client for ages, can't
tell if zftp would fit the bill

Comment?

zzapper (vim, cygwin, wiki & zsh)
--

vim -c ":%s/^/WhfgTNabgureRIvzSUnpxre/|:%s/[R-T]/ /Ig|:normal ggVGg?"

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Re: zftp bit of a dark horse?

[Peter Stephenson]

zzapper wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Why does zftp appear to be bit of a dark horse?
> 
> In Cygwin it doesn't seem to be installed by default (although files are ther
> e). I Googled for
> tutorials or example scripts and got very few hits.
> 
> Is it a relatively new feature? I've been looking for a really flexible FTP c
> lient for ages, can't
> tell if zftp would fit the bill

It's not particularly new.  It definitely compiles and runs under
Cygwin, whether distributed or not (I just tried).

Its chief weakness is... among its chief weaknesses are signal handling
and timeouts.  It's hard to interrupt it if it gets stuck, and it can
get stuck, for example, trying to disconnect from an unresponsive host.
That can make the shell hang on exit.  These parts really needs
rewriting.  Apart from that, it's pretty usable.

Not suprisingly, the completion support is pretty good, though I'm aware
of a problem with directory completion on servers which don't report
directories specially with `ls -F' (and there's no requirement in RFC959
that they should, in fact I think options to the FTP ls command are
non-standard).  zfcd_match could be upgraded to use `dir' which is more
likely to indicate directories.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@csr.com>                  Software Engineer
CSR Ltd., Science Park, Milton Road,
Cambridge, CB4 0WH, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 692070


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Re: zftp bit of a dark horse?

[DervishD]

    Hi zzapper :)

 * zzapper <david@tvis.co.uk> dixit:
> Is it a relatively new feature? I've been looking for a really
> flexible FTP client for ages, can't tell if zftp would fit the bill

    Well, my opinion may be a little... biased, because I *really*
love zftp. For me is perfect at the user interface level, because you
have that lovely zsh completion system, functions (and you can make
your own), fully automation with scripts if you like, etc. In fact it
is pretty usable even without the functions, just by using the raw
builtin. A very good client :)

    Now, the bad points (yes, it has some):

    The first one is that, even though a ftp client has the burden on
the user interface, a shell is not the proper place (in my humble
opinion, of course) to have a ftp client implemented, no matter how
good the user interface of that shell is. The tao is to separate the
user interaction part of the shell so you can use all that power in
third party applications that have a crappy user interface. This way
you can use your favourite ftp client but with a good and powerful
user interface. That said, ZLE is not going to be separated (at least
soon) from the rest, so zftp seems to me as a very good solution.

    But the worst part is derived from zftp being a builtin. If it
gets stuck, you have to kill the shell. And it gets stuck easily,
believe me :(( It's immune to signals, doesn't timeout, etc. If you
don't make heavy use of FTP, zftp IS YOUR OPTION. Period. It's easy
to use, powerful and fully integrated with any shell script you can
think of. But if you make heavy use of FTP, zftp may be a bit
annoying, getting stuck anytime your network connection, the server
or whatever doesn't work well. I must confess I like it even in that
'bad' moments...

    I wrote a couple of times to the list relating the problem an
some suggestions, but I must confess that my suggestions were not
accompanied by code nor real solutions so nobody really cared. zftp
needs a rewrite to be really useful, but I understand that is not a
high priority task. Give zftp an opportunity, you won't regret ;)

    Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado

-- 
Linux Registered User 88736
http://www.pleyades.net & http://raul.pleyades.net/

Re: zftp bit of a dark horse?

[Peter A. Castro]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, zzapper wrote:

> Hi,

Greetings, zapper,
  Long time no see :)

> Why does zftp appear to be bit of a dark horse?
>
> In Cygwin it doesn't seem to be installed by default (although files are
> there). I Googled for tutorials or example scripts and got very few hits.

"installed" is a rather incorrect term to use.  zftp, like all the other
neat features of zsh, are "built" and packaged as part of the Cygwin
distribution of zsh.  zftp is "installed" along with the rest of zsh.
Like many features of zsh, zftp simply isn't setup as "available" by
default for Cygwin.  This is done on purpose.  Feature bloat is something
I truely hate.  Turning on features by default qualifies as such in my
book.  It's often trivial to enable such features (just an autoload
away), but there's always a cost exacted by doing so.  Often that cost is
the startup speed of the shell.  I'd much rather have only a few features
(ie: those most likely used by all) to be enable by default and let the
user decide what s/he wants there after.  In the case of Windows, shell
startup is already pretty slow.  I'd rather let the user decide what
other features are worth a little more startup wait.

> Is it a relatively new feature? I've been looking for a really flexible
> FTP client for ages, can't tell if zftp would fit the bill

As others have already commented, it's not all that new a feature.  It
does have it's share of features/problems.  But then so does FTP itself.
The thing I really truely like about zftp is that it is *scriptable*.
Writing pure FTP scripts is a real pain in the arse.  Writing scipts to
use zftp, by contrast, is more sensible and you can actually code some
logic into the script to make decisions depending on what's at the remote
site.  Try doing that with the classic FTP client.

I did consider providing a fully customized set of .z* files but it would
really only reflect my tastes in environment.  Since shell enviornments
are truely a personal thing, I decided a minimalist approach was best.
There's always the info and man pages as well as some other doc.  Anyone
picking up a new shell would likely start there and read about the
wonders of the shell.

Feel free to contribute more complex .z* files.  I'm happy to host them
on my website, at least for the Cygwin distribution, if you like.

> Comment?
>
> zzapper (vim, cygwin, wiki & zsh)
> --
> vim -c ":%s/^/WhfgTNabgureRIvzSUnpxre/|:%s/[R-T]/ /Ig|:normal ggVGg?"
> http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=305  Best of Vim Tips

-- 
Peter A. Castro <doctor@fruitbat.org> or <Peter.Castro@oracle.com>
	"Cats are just autistic Dogs" -- Dr. Tony Attwood

Re: zftp bit of a dark horse?

[zzapper]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004 12:36:04 -0700 (PDT),  wrote:

>On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, zzapper wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>
>Greetings, zapper,
>  Long time no see :)
>

Peter,
I've just tried using zftp (on cygwin) it's marvellously intutive, I wrote a script to upload a file
in seconds and it worked straightway without any fiddling!!!

I had been scared by the idea of installing zftp but that's simple

here's my script

cd /my_local_directory
# init zftp
autoload -U zfinit  
zfinit
# login & connect
zfparams www.rayninfo.co.uk myuserid mypassword
zfopen
# lets ftp a file
zfput my_local_file.html
zfls -l my_local_file.html


zzapper (vim, cygwin, wiki & zsh)
--

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