I need to do a lot of automated ftp jobs myself. I have tried several versions of this and have finally settled on a style of script that I like. I found that using a .netrc file to automate the logging-in process kept painting me into a corner because different scripts needed to sign in as different users. So I avoid .netrc and force the script to sign in. I don't like to allocate pty's unless I really am forced into it, so I also avoid pty based tools like expect. I really like ksh so that was my tool of choice. And I like the co-process concept because it makes feeding commands into the ftp process so easy with "print -p". The only problem is that the co-process manipulates standard-out so as to make it available to "read -p". And it's too hard to know how many "read -p" I will need. So I send the output to a different file descriptor. Putting it all together:
Code:
#! /usr/bin/ksh
HOST=remote.host.name
USER=whoever
PASSWD=whatever
exec 4>&1
ftp -nv >&4 2>&4 |&
print -p open $HOST
print -p user $USER $PASSWD
print -p cd directory
print -p binary
print -p put tar.gz
print -p bye
wait
exit 0
