ZSHZFTPSYS(1) - man - phpman

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ZSHZFTPSYS(1) General Commands Manual ZSHZFTPSYS(1)

NAME
zshzftpsys - zftp function front-end

DESCRIPTION
This describes the set of shell functions supplied with the source distribution as an inter‐
face to the zftp builtin command, allowing you to perform FTP operations from the shell com‐
mand line or within functions or scripts. The interface is similar to a traditional FTP
client (e.g. the ftp command itself, see ftp(1)), but as it is entirely done within the shell
all the familiar completion, editing and globbing features, and so on, are present, and
macros are particularly simple to write as they are just ordinary shell functions.

The prerequisite is that the zftp command, as described in zshmodules(1) , must be available
in the version of zsh installed at your site. If the shell is configured to load new com‐
mands at run time, it probably is: typing `zmodload zsh/zftp' will make sure (if that runs
silently, it has worked). If this is not the case, it is possible zftp was linked into the
shell anyway: to test this, type `which zftp' and if zftp is available you will get the mes‐
sage `zftp: shell built-in command'.

Commands given directly with zftp builtin may be interspersed between the functions in this
suite; in a few cases, using zftp directly may cause some of the status information stored in
shell parameters to become invalid. Note in particular the description of the variables
$ZFTP_TMOUT, $ZFTP_PREFS and $ZFTP_VERBOSE for zftp.

INSTALLATION
You should make sure all the functions from the Functions/Zftp directory of the source dis‐
tribution are available; they all begin with the two letters `zf'. They may already have
been installed on your system; otherwise, you will need to find them and copy them. The di‐
rectory should appear as one of the elements of the $fpath array (this should already be the
case if they were installed), and at least the function zfinit should be autoloaded; it will
autoload the rest. Finally, to initialize the use of the system you need to call the zfinit
function. The following code in your .zshrc will arrange for this; assume the functions are
stored in the directory ~/myfns:

fpath=(~/myfns $fpath)
autoload -U zfinit
zfinit

Note that zfinit assumes you are using the zmodload method to load the zftp command. If it
is already built into the shell, change zfinit to zfinit -n. It is helpful (though not es‐
sential) if the call to zfinit appears after any code to initialize the new completion sys‐
tem, else unnecessary compctl commands will be given.

FUNCTIONS
The sequence of operations in performing a file transfer is essentially the same as that in a
standard FTP client. Note that, due to a quirk of the shell's getopts builtin, for those
functions that handle options you must use `--' rather than `-' to ensure the remaining argu‐
ments are treated literally (a single `-' is treated as an argument).

Opening a connection
zfparams [ host [ user [ password ... ] ] ]
Set or show the parameters for a future zfopen with no arguments. If no arguments are
given, the current parameters are displayed (the password will be shown as a line of
asterisks). If a host is given, and either the user or password is not, they will be
prompted for; also, any parameter given as `?' will be prompted for, and if the `?' is
followed by a string, that will be used as the prompt. As zfopen calls zfparams to
store the parameters, this usually need not be called directly.

A single argument `-' will delete the stored parameters. This will also cause the
memory of the last directory (and so on) on the other host to be deleted.

zfopen [ -1 ] [ host [ user [ password [ account ] ] ] ]
If host is present, open a connection to that host under username user with password
password (and, on the rare occasions when it is necessary, account account). If a
necessary parameter is missing or given as `?' it will be prompted for. If host is
not present, use a previously stored set of parameters.

If the command was successful, and the terminal is compatible with xterm or is
sun-cmd, a summary will appear in the title bar, giving the local host:directory and
the remote host:directory; this is handled by the function zftp_chpwd, described be‐
low.

Normally, the host, user and password are internally recorded for later re-opening,
either by a zfopen with no arguments, or automatically (see below). With the option
`-1', no information is stored. Also, if an open command with arguments failed, the
parameters will not be retained (and any previous parameters will also be deleted). A
zfopen on its own, or a zfopen -1, never alters the stored parameters.

Both zfopen and zfanon (but not zfparams) understand URLs of the form
ftp://host/path... as meaning to connect to the host, then change directory to path
(which must be a directory, not a file). The `ftp://' can be omitted; the trailing
`/' is enough to trigger recognition of the path. Note prefixes other than `ftp:' are
not recognized, and that all characters after the first slash beyond host are signifi‐
cant in path.

zfanon [ -1 ] host
Open a connection host for anonymous FTP. The username used is `anonymous'. The
password (which will be reported the first time) is generated as user@host; this is
then stored in the shell parameter $EMAIL_ADDR which can alternatively be set manually
to a suitable string.

Directory management
zfcd [ dir ]
zfcd -
zfcd old new
Change the current directory on the remote server: this is implemented to have many
of the features of the shell builtin cd.

In the first form with dir present, change to the directory dir. The command `zfcd
..' is treated specially, so is guaranteed to work on non-UNIX servers (note this is
handled internally by zftp). If dir is omitted, has the effect of `zfcd ~'.

The second form changes to the directory previously current.

The third form attempts to change the current directory by replacing the first occur‐
rence of the string old with the string new in the current directory.

Note that in this command, and indeed anywhere a remote filename is expected, the
string which on the local host corresponds to `~' is converted back to a `~' before
being passed to the remote machine. This is convenient because of the way expansion
is performed on the command line before zfcd receives a string. For example, suppose
the command is `zfcd ~/foo'. The shell will expand this to a full path such as `zfcd
/home/user2/pws/foo'. At this stage, zfcd recognises the initial path as correspond‐
ing to `~' and will send the directory to the remote host as ~/foo, so that the `~'
will be expanded by the server to the correct remote host directory. Other named di‐
rectories of the form `~name' are not treated in this fashion.

zfhere Change directory on the remote server to the one corresponding to the current local
directory, with special handling of `~' as in zfcd. For example, if the current local
directory is ~/foo/bar, then zfhere performs the effect of `zfcd ~/foo/bar'.

zfdir [ -rfd ] [ - ] [ dir-options ] [ dir ]
Produce a long directory listing. The arguments dir-options and dir are passed di‐
rectly to the server and their effect is implementation dependent, but specifying a
particular remote directory dir is usually possible. The output is passed through a
pager given by the environment variable $PAGER, or `more' if that is not set.

The directory is usually cached for re-use. In fact, two caches are maintained. One
is for use when there is no dir-options or dir, i.e. a full listing of the current re‐
mote directory; it is flushed when the current remote directory changes. The other is
kept for repeated use of zfdir with the same arguments; for example, repeated use of
`zfdir /pub/gnu' will only require the directory to be retrieved on the first call.
Alternatively, this cache can be re-viewed with the -r option. As relative directo‐
ries will confuse zfdir, the -f option can be used to force the cache to be flushed
before the directory is listed. The option -d will delete both caches without showing
a directory listing; it will also delete the cache of file names in the current remote
directory, if any.

zfls [ ls-options ] [ dir ]
List files on the remote server. With no arguments, this will produce a simple list
of file names for the current remote directory. Any arguments are passed directly to
the server. No pager and no caching is used.

Status commands
zftype [ type ]
With no arguments, show the type of data to be transferred, usually ASCII or binary.
With an argument, change the type: the types `A' or `ASCII' for ASCII data and `B' or
`BINARY', `I' or `IMAGE' for binary data are understood case-insensitively.

zfstat [ -v ]
Show the status of the current or last connection, as well as the status of some of
zftp's status variables. With the -v option, a more verbose listing is produced by
querying the server for its version of events, too.

Retrieving files
The commands for retrieving files all take at least two options. -G suppresses remote file‐
name expansion which would otherwise be performed (see below for a more detailed description
of that). -t attempts to set the modification time of the local file to that of the remote
file: see the description of the function zfrtime below for more information.

zfget [ -Gtc ] file1 ...
Retrieve all the listed files file1 ... one at a time from the remote server. If a
file contains a `/', the full name is passed to the remote server, but the file is
stored locally under the name given by the part after the final `/'. The option -c
(cat) forces all files to be sent as a single stream to standard output; in this case
the -t option has no effect.

zfuget [ -Gvst ] file1 ...
As zfget, but only retrieve files where the version on the remote server is newer (has
a later modification time), or where the local file does not exist. If the remote
file is older but the files have different sizes, or if the sizes are the same but the
remote file is newer, the user will usually be queried. With the option -s, the com‐
mand runs silently and will always retrieve the file in either of those two cases.
With the option -v, the command prints more information about the files while it is
working out whether or not to transfer them.

zfcget [ -Gt ] file1 ...
As zfget, but if any of the local files exists, and is shorter than the corresponding
remote file, the command assumes that it is the result of a partially completed trans‐
fer and attempts to transfer the rest of the file. This is useful on a poor connec‐
tion which keeps failing.

Note that this requires a commonly implemented, but non-standard, version of the FTP
protocol, so is not guaranteed to work on all servers.

zfgcp [ -Gt ] remote-file local-file
zfgcp [ -Gt ] rfile1 ... ldir
This retrieves files from the remote server with arguments behaving similarly to the
cp command.

In the first form, copy remote-file from the server to the local file local-file.

In the second form, copy all the remote files rfile1 ... into the local directory ldir
retaining the same basenames. This assumes UNIX directory semantics.

Sending files
zfput [ -r ] file1 ...
Send all the file1 ... given separately to the remote server. If a filename contains
a `/', the full filename is used locally to find the file, but only the basename is
used for the remote file name.

With the option -r, if any of the files are directories they are sent recursively with
all their subdirectories, including files beginning with `.'. This requires that the
remote machine understand UNIX file semantics, since `/' is used as a directory sepa‐
rator.

zfuput [ -vs ] file1 ...
As zfput, but only send files which are newer than their remote equivalents, or if the
remote file does not exist. The logic is the same as for zfuget, but reversed between
local and remote files.

zfcput file1 ...
As zfput, but if any remote file already exists and is shorter than the local equiva‐
lent, assume it is the result of an incomplete transfer and send the rest of the file
to append to the existing part. As the FTP append command is part of the standard
set, this is in principle more likely to work than zfcget.

zfpcp local-file remote-file
zfpcp lfile1 ... rdir
This sends files to the remote server with arguments behaving similarly to the cp com‐
mand.

With two arguments, copy local-file to the server as remote-file.

With more than two arguments, copy all the local files lfile1 ... into the existing
remote directory rdir retaining the same basenames. This assumes UNIX directory se‐
mantics.

A problem arises if you attempt to use zfpcp lfile1 rdir, i.e. the second form of
copying but with two arguments, as the command has no simple way of knowing if rdir
corresponds to a directory or a filename. It attempts to resolve this in various
ways. First, if the rdir argument is `.' or `..' or ends in a slash, it is assumed to
be a directory. Secondly, if the operation of copying to a remote file in the first
form failed, and the remote server sends back the expected failure code 553 and a re‐
ply including the string `Is a directory', then zfpcp will retry using the second
form.

Closing the connection
zfclose
Close the connection.

Session management
zfsession [ -lvod ] [ sessname ]
Allows you to manage multiple FTP sessions at once. By default, connections take
place in a session called `default'; by giving the command `zfsession sessname' you
can change to a new or existing session with a name of your choice. The new session
remembers its own connection, as well as associated shell parameters, and also the
host/user parameters set by zfparams. Hence you can have different sessions set up to
connect to different hosts, each remembering the appropriate host, user and password.

With no arguments, zfsession prints the name of the current session; with the option
-l it lists all sessions which currently exist, and with the option -v it gives a ver‐
bose list showing the host and directory for each session, where the current session
is marked with an asterisk. With -o, it will switch to the most recent previous ses‐
sion.

With -d, the given session (or else the current one) is removed; everything to do with
it is completely forgotten. If it was the only session, a new session called `de‐‐
fault' is created and made current. It is safest not to delete sessions while back‐
ground commands using zftp are active.

zftransfer sess1:file1 sess2:file2
Transfer files between two sessions; no local copy is made. The file is read from the
session sess1 as file1 and written to session sess2 as file file2; file1 and file2 may
be relative to the current directories of the session. Either sess1 or sess2 may be
omitted (though the colon should be retained if there is a possibility of a colon ap‐
pearing in the file name) and defaults to the current session; file2 may be omitted or
may end with a slash, in which case the basename of file1 will be added. The sessions
sess1 and sess2 must be distinct.

The operation is performed using pipes, so it is required that the connections still
be valid in a subshell, which is not the case under versions of some operating sys‐
tems, presumably due to a system bug.

Bookmarks
The two functions zfmark and zfgoto allow you to `bookmark' the present location (host, user
and directory) of the current FTP connection for later use. The file to be used for storing
and retrieving bookmarks is given by the parameter $ZFTP_BMFILE; if not set when one of the
two functions is called, it will be set to the file .zfbkmarks in the directory where your
zsh startup files live (usually ~).

zfmark [ bookmark ]
If given an argument, mark the current host, user and directory under the name book‐
mark for later use by zfgoto. If there is no connection open, use the values for the
last connection immediately before it was closed; it is an error if there was none.
Any existing bookmark under the same name will be silently replaced.

If not given an argument, list the existing bookmarks and the points to which they re‐
fer in the form user@host:directory; this is the format in which they are stored, and
the file may be edited directly.

zfgoto [ -n ] bookmark
Return to the location given by bookmark, as previously set by zfmark. If the loca‐
tion has user `ftp' or `anonymous', open the connection with zfanon, so that no pass‐
word is required. If the user and host parameters match those stored for the current
session, if any, those will be used, and again no password is required. Otherwise a
password will be prompted for.

With the option -n, the bookmark is taken to be a nickname stored by the ncftp program
in its bookmark file, which is assumed to be ~/.ncftp/bookmarks. The function works
identically in other ways. Note that there is no mechanism for adding or modifying
ncftp bookmarks from the zftp functions.

Other functions
Mostly, these functions will not be called directly (apart from zfinit), but are described
here for completeness. You may wish to alter zftp_chpwd and zftp_progress, in particular.

zfinit [ -n ]
As described above, this is used to initialize the zftp function system. The -n op‐
tion should be used if the zftp command is already built into the shell.

zfautocheck [ -dn ]
This function is called to implement automatic reopening behaviour, as described in
more detail below. The options must appear in the first argument; -n prevents the
command from changing to the old directory, while -d prevents it from setting the
variable do_close, which it otherwise does as a flag for automatically closing the
connection after a transfer. The host and directory for the last session are stored
in the variable $zflastsession, but the internal host/user/password parameters must
also be correctly set.

zfcd_match prefix suffix
This performs matching for completion of remote directory names. If the remote server
is UNIX, it will attempt to persuade the server to list the remote directory with sub‐
directories marked, which usually works but is not guaranteed. On other hosts it sim‐
ply calls zfget_match and hence completes all files, not just directories. On some
systems, directories may not even look like filenames.

zfget_match prefix suffix
This performs matching for completion of remote filenames. It caches files for the
current directory (only) in the shell parameter $zftp_fcache. It is in the form to be
called by the -K option of compctl, but also works when called from a widget-style
completion function with prefix and suffix set appropriately.

zfrglob varname
Perform remote globbing, as describes in more detail below. varname is the name of a
variable containing the pattern to be expanded; if there were any matches, the same
variable will be set to the expanded set of filenames on return.

zfrtime lfile rfile [ time ]
Set the local file lfile to have the same modification time as the remote file rfile,
or the explicit time time in FTP format CCYYMMDDhhmmSS for the GMT timezone. This
uses the shell's zsh/datetime module to perform the conversion from GMT to local time.

zftp_chpwd
This function is called every time a connection is opened, or closed, or the remote
directory changes. This version alters the title bar of an xterm-compatible or
sun-cmd terminal emulator to reflect the local and remote hostnames and current direc‐
tories. It works best when combined with the function chpwd. In particular, a func‐
tion of the form

chpwd() {
if [[ -n $ZFTP_USER ]]; then
zftp_chpwd
else
# usual chpwd e.g put host:directory in title bar
fi
}

fits in well.

zftp_progress
This function shows the status of the transfer. It will not write anything unless the
output is going to a terminal; however, if you transfer files in the background, you
should turn off progress reports by hand using `zstyle ':zftp:*' progress none'. Note
also that if you alter it, any output must be to standard error, as standard output
may be a file being received. The form of the progress meter, or whether it is used
at all, can be configured without altering the function, as described in the next sec‐
tion.

zffcache
This is used to implement caching of files in the current directory for each session
separately. It is used by zfget_match and zfrglob.

MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES
Configuration
Various styles are available using the standard shell style mechanism, described in zshmod‐
ules(1). Briefly, the command `zstyle ':zftp:*' style value ...'. defines the style to have
value value; more than one value may be given, although that is not useful in the cases de‐
scribed here. These values will then be used throughout the zftp function system. For more
precise control, the first argument, which gives a context in which the style applies, can be
modified to include a particular function, as for example `:zftp:zfget': the style will then
have the given value only in the zfget function. Values for the same style in different con‐
texts may be set; the most specific function will be used, where strings are held to be more
specific than patterns, and longer patterns and shorter patterns. Note that only the top
level function name, as called by the user, is used; calling of lower level functions is
transparent to the user. Hence modifications to the title bar in zftp_chpwd use the contexts
:zftp:zfopen, :zftp:zfcd, etc., depending where it was called from. The following styles are
understood:

progress
Controls the way that zftp_progress reports on the progress of a transfer. If empty,
unset, or `none', no progress report is made; if `bar' a growing bar of inverse video
is shown; if `percent' (or any other string, though this may change in future), the
percentage of the file transferred is shown. The bar meter requires that the width of
the terminal be available via the $COLUMNS parameter (normally this is set automati‐
cally). If the size of the file being transferred is not available, bar and percent
meters will simply show the number of bytes transferred so far.

When zfinit is run, if this style is not defined for the context :zftp:*, it will be
set to `bar'.

update Specifies the minimum time interval between updates of the progress meter in seconds.
No update is made unless new data has been received, so the actual time interval is
limited only by $ZFTP_TIMEOUT.

As described for progress, zfinit will force this to default to 1.

remote-glob
If set to `1', `yes' or `true', filename generation (globbing) is performed on the re‐
mote machine instead of by zsh itself; see below.

titlebar
If set to `1', `yes' or `true', zftp_chpwd will put the remote host and remote direc‐
tory into the titlebar of terminal emulators such as xterm or sun-cmd that allow this.

As described for progress, zfinit will force this to default to 1.

chpwd If set to `1' `yes' or `true', zftp_chpwd will call the function chpwd when a connec‐
tion is closed. This is useful if the remote host details were put into the terminal
title bar by zftp_chpwd and your usual chpwd also modifies the title bar.

When zfinit is run, it will determine whether chpwd exists and if so it will set the
default value for the style to 1 if none exists already.

Note that there is also an associative array zfconfig which contains values used by the func‐
tion system. This should not be modified or overwritten.

Remote globbing
The commands for retrieving files usually perform filename generation (globbing) on their ar‐
guments; this can be turned off by passing the option -G to each of the commands. Normally
this operates by retrieving a complete list of files for the directory in question, then
matching these locally against the pattern supplied. This has the advantage that the full
range of zsh patterns (respecting the setting of the option EXTENDED_GLOB) can be used. How‐
ever, it means that the directory part of a filename will not be expanded and must be given
exactly. If the remote server does not support the UNIX directory semantics, directory han‐
dling is problematic and it is recommended that globbing only be used within the current di‐
rectory. The list of files in the current directory, if retrieved, will be cached, so that
subsequent globs in the same directory without an intervening zfcd are much faster.

If the remote-glob style (see above) is set, globbing is instead performed on the remote
host: the server is asked for a list of matching files. This is highly dependent on how the
server is implemented, though typically UNIX servers will provide support for basic glob pat‐
terns. This may in some cases be faster, as it avoids retrieving the entire list of direc‐
tory contents.

Automatic and temporary reopening
As described for the zfopen command, a subsequent zfopen with no parameters will reopen the
connection to the last host (this includes connections made with the zfanon command). Opened
in this fashion, the connection starts in the default remote directory and will remain open
until explicitly closed.

Automatic re-opening is also available. If a connection is not currently open and a command
requiring a connection is given, the last connection is implicitly reopened. In this case
the directory which was current when the connection was closed again becomes the current di‐
rectory (unless, of course, the command given changes it). Automatic reopening will also
take place if the connection was close by the remote server for whatever reason (e.g. a time‐
out). It is not available if the -1 option to zfopen or zfanon was used.

Furthermore, if the command issued is a file transfer, the connection will be closed after
the transfer is finished, hence providing a one-shot mode for transfers. This does not apply
to directory changing or listing commands; for example a zfdir may reopen a connection but
will leave it open. Also, automatic closure will only ever happen in the same command as au‐
tomatic opening, i.e a zfdir directly followed by a zfget will never close the connection au‐
tomatically.

Information about the previous connection is given by the zfstat function. So, for example,
if that reports:

Session: default
Not connected.
Last session: ftp.bar.com:/pub/textfiles

then the command zfget file.txt will attempt to reopen a connection to ftp.bar.com, retrieve
the file /pub/textfiles/file.txt, and immediately close the connection again. On the other
hand, zfcd .. will open the connection in the directory /pub and leave it open.

Note that all the above is local to each session; if you return to a previous session, the
connection for that session is the one which will be reopened.

Completion
Completion of local and remote files, directories, sessions and bookmarks is supported. The
older, compctl-style completion is defined when zfinit is called; support for the new wid‐
get-based completion system is provided in the function Completion/Zsh/Command/_zftp, which
should be installed with the other functions of the completion system and hence should auto‐
matically be available.

zsh 5.8.1 February 12, 2022 ZSHZFTPSYS(1)