Can someone explain to me how a here doc works.

I thought it was something like this

<<EOF
command
command
command
EOF

What I am trying to do is put a ftp commands into my shell script, and I've been told that I need to use a here doc for it.

Can anybody shed some light on this please.

ftp << EOF
open ftp.yoursite.com
bin
get /pub/file
quit
EOF

The 2 less than (<<) signs indicate that to the shell that a here document follows . The starting EOF indicates the opening delimiters and the ending EOF indicates the ending delimiters. The delimiters used here are not fixed, you can use a plus sign(+), an exclamation mark (!), EOF as used above etc etc...
Everything between these 2 delimiters is send as input to the process (Here it's ftp).

Nice one thanks for the info.

Just one little extra question.

If I'm using FTP, and I want to sign in as another user other than myself with a password, does it work the same, or do I have to do something else.. Or is that when the .netrc file comes in so I don't need a password..

ftp -n -v hostname <<-ENDTAG
userid
password
the rest of your ftp commands
ENDTAG

That will drop all of your output into a log, in this case called "session.log".

HTH

yes it will work the same provided you know the username and it's password.