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Date:      Sun, 3 Oct 1999 07:49:34 +0200
From:      Barry Irwin <bvi@rucus.ru.ac.za>
To:        Matthias Buelow <mkb@altair.mayn.de>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: your mail
Message-ID:  <19991003074934.C47240@rucus.ru.ac.za>
In-Reply-To: <19991003072219.F728@altair.mayn.de>
References:  <19991003072219.F728@altair.mayn.de>

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On Sun 1999-10-03 (07:22), Matthias Buelow wrote:
> Bcc: 
> Subject: Re: FTP directory listing with ftpio(3) and fetch(3)
> Reply-To: 
> In-Reply-To: <xzpwvt7au87.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>
> 
> 
> BTW.. although risking to be off-topic by miles, I always liked the way
> how NetBSD's ftp(1) (since 1.4 or so) implemented http and ftp URL
> fetching and thus eliminated the need for a fetch(1) command.
> Couldn't the FreeBSD ftp(1) be enhanced that way, [ObTopic, slime slime]
> to use fetch(3) for that purpose?

This is where a useful tool like wget comes into play.  Wget can be pretty
much used as an automated replacement for fetch, or FTP URL retrieval.  Can
also be plugged into the whole ports system so that it can retrieve the
ports data packages.

> 
> I'd really love to have yet another superfluous userland tool like
> fetch(1) go away, especially because it collides in namespace with
> another fetch program and the functionality could be very well
> integrated with the ftp utility.  Personally, I find fetch(1) a bad idea.
> 
root@rucus:~# ls -lad `which fetch`
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  35300 Jun 11 22:10 /usr/bin/fetch
root@rucus:~# ls -lad `which wget`
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  103240 Dec 23 1998 /usr/local/bin/wget
root@rucus:~# ls -lad `which ftp`
-r-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  72312 Jun 11 22:10 /usr/bin/ftp

as this shows fetch is a far more leightweight implementation.  Important
when considering its use in systems like picobsd, or other small projects. 
The whole *nix philosophy is to have a myrid of tools that all do a job, and
the joy/pain, comes in the blending, and linking of these tools together
in order to perform a complex task.

Barry

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Barry Irwin 				 	IRC:  balin@zanet (#linux)
bvi@moria.org  					http://rucus.ru.ac.za/~bvi
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