Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi this is for my knowledge;

I have FTP scripts which looks like this:[i might be wrong ; but dont worry]

HOST=
USER=
PASSwd=

ftp -in .....

bi
mget

exit

--------------
Now my question is : can i use while do loop in this script to pull files from a directory on this FTP server. to my local machine?

Thanks to all

yes of course you can, put it outside of the ftp code. BUT , this way, you are calling ftp each time it goes through the loop. Depending on what you want to do, you can use mput or mget (if you want to loop through files with a specific extension, for example).

Alternatively, you can also use a language that have better FTP protocol control , such as Python (or Perl) with their FTP modules. eg Python

Code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import ftplib
server="localhost"
user="anonymous"
password="test@hotmail.com"

try:
    ftp = ftplib.FTP(server)    
    ftp.login(user,password)
except Exception,e:
    print e
else:    
    while <some condition>:
       # do something eg 
       #ftp.dosomething()
.......

Hi ghosdog,

Thanks for your reply. what I understood from your answer or code is ur using python...but I want to use it in reqular ftp...like

HOST=
USER=
PASSwd=

ftp -in .....

bi
cd archive
mget
exit

In my code u see there I am changing into a directory named "archive"...I want to use the while do loop to grab files based on the condition from that directory. I am curious how to do that. I tried but it shows as unknown command.

I know I can use two separate scripts 1) ftp script and 2) while do loop script. But will be great to use one.

Thanks again

do you mean this:

Code:

ftp -in .....

bi
cd archive
mget
while loop here ?? <------------- put while loop here?? if it is, its not correct, as FTP protocol doesn't understand loops....
exit

you have to get the results back from the FTP session and store somewhere, either in variables/array or some file. then do your while loop.
(OR unless your FTP client is sophisticated enough to do such things )

Thank you so much Ghostdog