Subject: Ftp-WG: mdtm and mlsd commands

From: "Alun Jones" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 15:41:01

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ftp-wg-owner [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Robert Oslin
> Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 11:01 AM
> 
> I believe that the probability of that happening would be next to nil,
> although not impossible. I can see how certain errors may arise in the
> path/file portion of the sequence, for example: "MDTM 20040502185322
> file.FILE/member.MBR", on an OS/400. However most non-NT/*nix 
> systems don't
> support MDTM-query, let along MDTM-modify in the first place. 

How would you check the modification time of a file called
"19700101000001 Eric.txt"?  What would the MDTM command look like?  How
would a server react on receiving it, and how would it know what to do?
What happens if a client that doesn't know MDTM-modify tries to MDTM-query
that file, on a server that supports MDTM-modify?

There are huge numbers of files stored with dates and times, and so many
formats, that it's very likely that a significant number of files have this
exact format.  If nothing else, it means that a default, alphabetical, sort
will list the files in exact date order.

> Anyway, popular clients like ws and cute should probably 
> support the newest
> standards, such as the proposed MFxx by David Somers, even while
> grandfathering the popular (albeit informal) mdtm-modify 
> sequence currently
> supported by many clients and servers.

I think MDTM-modify should not just be grandfathered, but should be dropped,
as ill-considered.

Alun.
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