FTP- Back To Basics

Okay, let's be honest here. The more you learn and the more specialized you become as a programmer, the more of the 'basics' you tend to forget. There are a couple tools I believe every programmer should have at their fingertips and basic FTP is one of them. Have you met the programmer who can't move a file around without SAS/Connect proc upload/download or some GUI FTP client? I have, and believe me, you don't want to be that programmer!

So, let's review File Transfer Protocol.

First of all, get to a command prompt. At your prompt type:
> ftp
This will start the FTP client. In FTP you open and close a connection to another machine. For my example the remote machine will be called fat_tuesday.
> open fat_tuesday
Now give your username and password.
Once you are connected to the remote machine you can put files onto the remote machine or get files onto your local machine. The local machine is ALWAYS referring to the machine you launched ftp from, not where you happen to be sitting! To put a file from my local machine to my fat_tuesday server I type:
> put myFile.txt
To get a file from the remote machine to my local machine I type:
> get someFile.txt
When I am done I can close the connection:
close fat_tuesday
And close the ftp client:
> bye

That's the basics. Here's some other useful commands, and remember you can always type help in ftp to get a list of commands.

mput -- multiple file put, can glob filenames (mput *.jpeg)
mget -- multiple file get, can glob filenames (mput *.jpeg)
prompt -- turns confirmation on/off for multiple file actions
bin -- change the file type to binary
cd -- change directory on the remote machine
lcd -- local change directory
ls -- list file (or use dir)