zshzftpsys
(1)
Name
zshzftpsys - end
Synopsis
Please see following description for synopsis
Description
User Commands ZSHZFTPSYS(1)
NAME
zshzftpsys - zftp function front-end
DESCRIPTION
This describes the set of shell functions supplied with the
source distribution as an interface to the zftp builtin com-
mand, allowing you to perform FTP operations from the shell
command 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 fea-
tures, 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 commands 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 message
`zftp: shell built-in command'.
Commands given directly with zftp builtin may be inter-
spersed 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 par-
ticular the description of the variables $ZFTP_TMOUT,
$ZFTP_PREFS and $ZFTP_VERBOSE for zftp.
INSTALLATION
You should make sure all the functions from the Func-
tions/Zftp directory of the source distribution are avail-
able; 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 directory 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 func-
tions 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
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not essential) if the call to zfinit appears after any code
to initialize the new completion system, 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 arguments are treated lit-
erally (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 parame-
ters. 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 com-
patible 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 func-
tion zftp_chpwd, described below.
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.
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Both zfopen and zfanon (but not zfparams) understand
URLs of the form ftp://host/path... as meaning to con-
nect 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 recogni-
tion of the path. Note prefixes other than `ftp:' are
not recognized, and that all characters after the first
slash beyond host are significant 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 spe-
cially, 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 occurrence 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 corresponding 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 directories of the
form `~name' are not treated in this fashion.
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zfhere
Change directory on the remote server to the one corre-
sponding to the current local directory, with special
handling of `~' as in zfcd. For example, if the cur-
rent 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 directly to the server
and their effect is implementation dependent, but spec-
ifying 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 remote directory; it is flushed when the cur-
rent 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 directories 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 trans-
ferred, 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.
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Retrieving files
The commands for retrieving files all take at least two
options. -G suppresses remote filename 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 informa-
tion.
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 command 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
transfer and attempts to transfer the rest of the file.
This is useful on a poor connection which keeps fail-
ing.
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 argu-
ments behaving similarly to the cp command.
In the first form, copy remote-file from the server to
the local file local-file.
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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 file-
name 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 subdirecto-
ries, including files beginning with `.'. This
requires that the remote machine understand UNIX file
semantics, since `/' is used as a directory separator.
zfuput [ -vs ] file1 ...
As zfput, but only send files which are newer than
their local 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 equivalent, 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 command.
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 direc-
tory semantics.
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 opera-
tion of copying to a remote file in the first form
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failed, and the remote server sends back the expected
failure code 553 and a reply 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 con-
nection, 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 ses-
sions which currently exist, and with the option -v it
gives a verbose 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 session.
With -d, the given session (or else the current one) is
removed; everything to do with it is completely forgot-
ten. If it was the only session, a new session called
`default' is created and made current. It is safest
not to delete sessions while background 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 appearing 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 dis-
tinct.
The operation is performed using pipes, so it is
required that the connections still be valid in a
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subshell, which is not the case under versions of some
operating systems, 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 cur-
rent 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 direc-
tory where your zsh startup files live (usually ~).
zfmark [ bookmark ]
If given an argument, mark the current host, user and
directory under the name bookmark 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 refer 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 location has user `ftp' or
`anonymous', open the connection with zfanon, so that
no password is required. If the user and host parame-
ters 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 nick-
name stored by the ncftp program in its bookmark file,
which is assumed to be ~/.ncftp/bookmarks. The func-
tion 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 particu-
lar.
zfinit [ -n ]
As described above, this is used to initialize the zftp
function system. The -n option should be used if the
zftp command is already built into the shell.
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zfautocheck [ -dn ]
This function is called to implement automatic reopen-
ing 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 vari-
able $zflastsession, but the internal host/user/pass-
word parameters must also be correctly set.
zfcd_match prefix suffix
This performs matching for completion of remote direc-
tory names. If the remote server is UNIX, it will
attempt to persuade the server to list the remote
directory with subdirectories marked, which usually
works but is not guaranteed. On other hosts it simply
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 file-
names. 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-compati-
ble or sun-cmd terminal emulator to reflect the local
and remote hostnames and current directories. It works
best when combined with the function chpwd. In partic-
ular, a function of the form
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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 back-
ground, 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 section.
zffcache
This is used to implement caching of files in the cur-
rent 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 zshmodules(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 described here. These val-
ues 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 contexts
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
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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 percent-
age 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 auto-
matically). 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 remote 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 directory 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 connection 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 function system. This should
not be modified or overwritten.
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Remote globbing
The commands for retrieving files usually perform filename
generation (globbing) on their arguments; this can be turned
off by passing the option -G to each of the commands. Nor-
mally 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. However, 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 handling is
problematic and it is recommended that globbing only be used
within the current directory. The list of files in the cur-
rent directory, if retrieved, will be cached, so that subse-
quent 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 patterns. This may in
some cases be faster, as it avoids retrieving the entire
list of directory 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 com-
mand). Opened in this fashion, the connection starts in the
default remote directory and will remain open until explic-
itly 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 directory (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 timeout). 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 automatic opening, i.e a zfdir directly fol-
lowed by a zfget will never close the connection
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automatically.
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 connec-
tion again. On the other hand, zfcd .. will open the con-
nection 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 ses-
sion is the one which will be reopened.
Completion
Completion of local and remote files, directories, sessions
and bookmarks is supported. The older, compctl-style com-
pletion is defined when zfinit is called; support for the
new widget-based completion system is provided in the func-
tion Completion/Zsh/Command/_zftp, which should be installed
with the other functions of the completion system and hence
should automatically be available.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | shell/zsh |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Volatile |
+---------------+------------------+
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from http://down-
loads.source-
forge.net/project/zsh/zsh/5.0.5/zsh-5.0.5.tar.bz2
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.zsh.org/.
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