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Date:      Fri, 10 Dec 1999 14:12:17 -0800 (PST)
From:      Joe Smith <inwap@best.com>
To:        FreeBSD-gnats-submit@freebsd.org
Subject:   docs/15408: Description of ls and nlist wrong in man page for ftp
Message-ID:  <199912102212.OAA18185@shell3.ba.best.com>

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>Number:         15408
>Category:       docs
>Synopsis:       Description of ls and nlist wrong in man page for ftp
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-doc
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Dec 10 14:20:01 PST 1999
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Joe Smith
>Release:        FreeBSD 2.2.8-STABLE i386
>Organization:
Chez Inwap
>Environment:
>Description:

	There is an undocumented change in the behavior of the 'ls' command
inside the ftp client program.  With older versions of ftp (such as the ones
use by Sun), the difference between 'ls' and 'dir' is that the former
sends the NLST command to get a list of names only and the latter sends
LIST to get a full directory listing (often done by executing `ls -l` on
the server).  The man page for ftp states that 'nlist' is an alias for
'ls' and that 'ls' will "print a list of the files in a directory on the
remote machine".

	The docs need to be changed to say that 'ls' is a synonym for 'dir'
and that 'nlist' has to be used to get a list of just the file names.

>How-To-Repeat:

ftp> debug
ftp> dir .cshrc
ftp> ls .cshrc
ftp> nlist .cshrc

Note from the response that 'ls' acts like 'dir' and not 'nlist'.

>Fix:
	
1) Change the program back so that 'ls' is synonymous with 'nlist'.
	or
2) Change the docs to show that 'ls' is different from 'nlist'.

	Update the man page, so that the paragraph on 'dir' includes
a statement how 'dir' differs from 'nlist'.  Replace the paragraph on
'ls' with "ls [remote-directory [local-file]]\nA synonym for dir."
Move the old description of 'ls' to 'nlist'.  Make it clear that,
according to the RFC, this command returns a list of files on the
remote machine, explictly excluding the names of any subdirectories
in the remote directory.  (The wu-ftpd-2.6.0 server enforces this.)


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
 


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