From owner-freebsd-hackers  Fri Jan 27 17:23:30 1995
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To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@freefall.cdrom.com>
cc: hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Subject: Re: Am I dreaming? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 27 Jan 95 10:00:56 PST."
             <199501271800.KAA23617@freefall.cdrom.com> 
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 95 17:16:31 -0800
From: Bakul Shah <bakul@netcom.com>
Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

Wouldn't `Alex' do what you want?  Here is a brief blurb
from an old net message by Jurgen Botz about alex:

  ...by far the most elegant solution is to eliminate the FTP
  client entirely and make the global FTP space part of your file system.
  Then you can write ordinary shell scripts to automate "FTP" operations.

  There is a program called "Alex" (from "Alexandria", as in: The
  Library of...)  that implements this solution as an NFS <-> FTP
  protocol "gateway", complete with some sophisticated caching.  You
  can get, build, and install it on a Unix machine that supports NFS

Then there is `prospero' by B.  Clifford Neuman which does
something similar + uses archie.  I have not heard much
lately about either system and I do not know how well they
work in practice.  Try archie to find out more recent info!