On Nov 11, 1997 08:34am, CHRIS HOLTEN wrote to JERRY SCHWARTZ:
 JS>> Piece of cake: the PROMPT command toggles interactive
 JS>> mode.  However, be very careful: there is no good way
 JS>> to make sure the transfer succeeded, and no protection
 JS>> against overwriting files.
 CH> Doesn't FTP, like most of MS text based utilities exit with an error
 CH> level if there is some kind of processing error?
No, it does not.  Atleast not what I found when I was using it for my
FTP hubbing operations.
This is one of the reasons I wrote my own. :-)  Another thing you
will find when you do the FTP scripts is that some commands
are not needed and waste alot of time.  So even if it had an ERROR
LEVEL trapping system, a FTP script like this:
          open ftp.whatever.com
          user yourid yourpassword
          mput c:\export\*.*
          mget /usenet/*.*
          exit
will probably abort if you don't have anything to send in your
export directory.  So I ended up doing a REAL crazy batch file that
creates the FTP script based on what was needed to be done.
Well, instead I wrote iFTP. :-)
"Intelligent IFTP", iFTP.EXE allows me to do just that and then some.
The top reasons I wrote iftp were:
      - I needed DOS like script commands, COPY, MOVE, IF, GOTO,
        etc.
      - I needed Errorlevels, hardcoded and user definable.
      - I needed a way to get userid and passwords into scripts
        i.e, OPEN Alias where Alias is stored in the IFTP.INI
        file.  It will automatically OPEN and login.
      - I neded the ability to Dial and hangup in the command line
        or in scripts.
      - I needed a way to have scripts call other common scripts.
      - So many errors can occured, that I need clean LOGGING of
        my scripts and also display to the console.  You will find
        with FTP, you will have a messy redirection and you can't
        watch it until it is done.
      - I needed IF conditions and GOTO commands:
            OPEN website
            if not success then goto error
      - Most important, I needed the ability to MOVE files from
        either direction, deleting the file after it was done
        before going to the next one. Example:
          move ftp:/usenet/*.* c:\iftp\import
               ^^^^
               special drive letter understood by iftp.
        One of the problems with normal FTP.EXE scripts when
        during a MGET command was if the line disconnected,
        you would have to download ALL over again.  The MOVE
        command solves this problem.
In all, I needed DOS like batch languages in FTP scripting. That
is what IFTP does.
iFTP is not free, but it is guarantee you to save you all kinds of
similar issues I had with the simple FTP program. :-) Check out
http:\www.santronics.com test drive section.   A complete iFTP
script is available to work with George Peace or John Souvestre FTP
hub services.
Hector Santos/Santronics Software
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