- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- Date: Sun, 18 Dec 1994 00:55:22 PST
- To: steveg@pa.dec.com
- Cc: www-proxy@www0.cern.ch, uri@bunyip.com
Dealing with FTP servers that allow direct retrieval of full path names but not the 'cwd' method was an issue. In the end, we came up with a description in the standard that didn't match current practice, but was at least unambiguous (you could really tell what a ftp URL meant) and portable (you wouldn't have to know what operating system, brand of unix, etc. the remote FTP server was running). I imagine currently released clients and servers haven't tracked the proposed standard; I hope they do. In the meanwhile, the short answer is that you can't reliably give out ftp URLs for sites/files where cwd A; cwd B; retr C isn't equivalent to retr A/B/C.
Received on Sunday, 18 December 1994 03:56:17 UTC