ZSHZFTPSYS(1) General Commands Manual ZSHZFTPSYS(1)
NAME
zshzftpsys - zftp function front-end
DESCRIPTION
This describes the set of shell functions supplied with the source dis-
tribution as an interface to the zftp builtin command, allowing you to
perform FTP operations from the shell command line or within functions
or scripts. The interface is similar to a traditional FTP client (e.g.
the ftp command itself, see ftp(1)), but as it is entirely done within
the shell all the familiar completion, editing and globbing features,
and so on, are present, and macros are particularly simple to write as
they are just ordinary shell functions.
The prerequisite is that the zftp command, as described in zshmodules(1)
, must be available in the version of zsh installed at your site. If
the shell is configured to load new commands at run time, it probably
is: typing `zmodload zsh/zftp' will make sure (if that runs silently, it
has worked). If this is not the case, it is possible zftp was linked
into the shell anyway: to test this, type `which zftp' and if zftp is
available you will get the message `zftp: shell built-in command'.
Commands given directly with zftp builtin may be interspersed between
the functions in this suite; in a few cases, using zftp directly may
cause some of the status information stored in shell parameters to be-
come invalid. Note in particular the description of the variables
$ZFTP_TMOUT, $ZFTP_PREFS and $ZFTP_VERBOSE for zftp.
INSTALLATION
You should make sure all the functions from the Functions/Zftp directory
of the source distribution are available; they all begin with the two
letters `zf'. They may already have been installed on your system; oth-
erwise, you will need to find them and copy them. The directory should
appear as one of the elements of the $fpath array (this should already
be the case if they were installed), and at least the function zfinit
should be autoloaded; it will autoload the rest. Finally, to initialize
the use of the system you need to call the zfinit function. The follow-
ing code in your .zshrc will arrange for this; assume the functions are
stored in the directory ~/myfns:
fpath=(~/myfns $fpath)
autoload -U zfinit
zfinit
Note that zfinit assumes you are using the zmodload method to load the
zftp command. If it is already built into the shell, change zfinit to
zfinit -n. It is helpful (though not essential) if the call to zfinit
appears after any code to initialize the new completion system, else un-
necessary compctl commands will be given.
FUNCTIONS
The sequence of operations in performing a file transfer is essentially
the same as that in a standard FTP client. Note that, due to a quirk of
the shell's getopts builtin, for those functions that handle options you
must use `--' rather than `-' to ensure the remaining arguments are
treated literally (a single `-' is treated as an argument).
Opening a connection
zfparams [ host [ user [ password ... ] ] ]
Set or show the parameters for a future zfopen with no arguments.
If no arguments are given, the current parameters are displayed
(the password will be shown as a line of asterisks). If a host
is given, and either the user or password is not, they will be
prompted for; also, any parameter given as `?' will be prompted
for, and if the `?' is followed by a string, that will be used as
the prompt. As zfopen calls zfparams to store the parameters,
this usually need not be called directly.
A single argument `-' will delete the stored parameters. This
will also cause the memory of the last directory (and so on) on
the other host to be deleted.
zfopen [ -1 ] [ host [ user [ password [ account ] ] ] ]
If host is present, open a connection to that host under username
user with password password (and, on the rare occasions when it
is necessary, account account). If a necessary parameter is
missing or given as `?' it will be prompted for. If host is not
present, use a previously stored set of parameters.
If the command was successful, and the terminal is compatible
with xterm or is sun-cmd, a summary will appear in the title bar,
giving the local host:directory and the remote host:directory;
this is handled by the function zftp_chpwd, described below.
Normally, the host, user and password are internally recorded for
later re-opening, either by a zfopen with no arguments, or auto-
matically (see below). With the option `-1', no information is
stored. Also, if an open command with arguments failed, the pa-
rameters will not be retained (and any previous parameters will
also be deleted). A zfopen on its own, or a zfopen -1, never al-
ters the stored parameters.
Both zfopen and zfanon (but not zfparams) understand URLs of the
form ftp://host/path... as meaning to connect to the host, then
change directory to path (which must be a directory, not a file).
The `ftp://' can be omitted; the trailing `/' is enough to trig-
ger recognition of the path. Note prefixes other than `ftp:' are
not recognized, and that all characters after the first slash be-
yond host are significant in path.
zfanon [ -1 ] host
Open a connection host for anonymous FTP. The username used is
`anonymous'. The password (which will be reported the first
time) is generated as user@host; this is then stored in the shell
parameter $EMAIL_ADDR which can alternatively be set manually to
a suitable string.
Directory management
zfcd [ dir ]
zfcd -
zfcd old new
Change the current directory on the remote server: this is im-
plemented to have many of the features of the shell builtin cd.
In the first form with dir present, change to the directory dir.
The command `zfcd ..' is treated specially, so is guaranteed to
work on non-UNIX servers (note this is handled internally by
zftp). If dir is omitted, has the effect of `zfcd ~'.
The second form changes to the directory previously current.
The third form attempts to change the current directory by re-
placing the first occurrence of the string old with the string
new in the current directory.
Note that in this command, and indeed anywhere a remote filename
is expected, the string which on the local host corresponds to
`~' is converted back to a `~' before being passed to the remote
machine. This is convenient because of the way expansion is per-
formed on the command line before zfcd receives a string. For
example, suppose the command is `zfcd ~/foo'. The shell will ex-
pand this to a full path such as `zfcd /home/user2/pws/foo'. At
this stage, zfcd recognises the initial path as corresponding to
`~' and will send the directory to the remote host as ~/foo, so
that the `~' will be expanded by the server to the correct remote
host directory. Other named directories of the form `~name' are
not treated in this fashion.
zfhere Change directory on the remote server to the one corresponding to
the current local directory, with special handling of `~' as in
zfcd. For example, if the current local directory is ~/foo/bar,
then zfhere performs the effect of `zfcd ~/foo/bar'.
zfdir [ -rfd ] [ - ] [ dir-options ] [ dir ]
Produce a long directory listing. The arguments dir-options and
dir are passed directly to the server and their effect is imple-
mentation dependent, but specifying a particular remote directory
dir is usually possible. The output is passed through a pager
given by the environment variable $PAGER, or `more' if that is
not set.
The directory is usually cached for re-use. In fact, two caches
are maintained. One is for use when there is no dir-options or
dir, i.e. a full listing of the current remote directory; it is
flushed when the current remote directory changes. The other is
kept for repeated use of zfdir with the same arguments; for exam-
ple, repeated use of `zfdir /pub/gnu' will only require the di-
rectory to be retrieved on the first call. Alternatively, this
cache can be re-viewed with the -r option. As relative directo-
ries will confuse zfdir, the -f option can be used to force the
cache to be flushed before the directory is listed. The option
-d will delete both caches without showing a directory listing;
it will also delete the cache of file names in the current remote
directory, if any.
zfls [ ls-options ] [ dir ]
List files on the remote server. With no arguments, this will
produce a simple list of file names for the current remote direc-
tory. Any arguments are passed directly to the server. No pager
and no caching is used.
Status commands
zftype [ type ]
With no arguments, show the type of data to be transferred, usu-
ally ASCII or binary. With an argument, change the type: the
types `A' or `ASCII' for ASCII data and `B' or `BINARY', `I' or
`IMAGE' for binary data are understood case-insensitively.
zfstat [ -v ]
Show the status of the current or last connection, as well as the
status of some of zftp's status variables. With the -v option, a
more verbose listing is produced by querying the server for its
version of events, too.
Retrieving files
The commands for retrieving files all take at least two options. -G sup-
presses remote filename expansion which would otherwise be performed
(see below for a more detailed description of that). -t attempts to set
the modification time of the local file to that of the remote file: see
the description of the function zfrtime below for more information.
zfget [ -Gtc ] file1 ...
Retrieve all the listed files file1 ... one at a time from the
remote server. If a file contains a `/', the full name is passed
to the remote server, but the file is stored locally under the
name given by the part after the final `/'. The option -c (cat)
forces all files to be sent as a single stream to standard out-
put; in this case the -t option has no effect.
zfuget [ -Gvst ] file1 ...
As zfget, but only retrieve files where the version on the remote
server is newer (has a later modification time), or where the lo-
cal file does not exist. If the remote file is older but the
files have different sizes, or if the sizes are the same but the
remote file is newer, the user will usually be queried. With the
option -s, the command runs silently and will always retrieve the
file in either of those two cases. With the option -v, the com-
mand prints more information about the files while it is working
out whether or not to transfer them.
zfcget [ -Gt ] file1 ...
As zfget, but if any of the local files exists, and is shorter
than the corresponding remote file, the command assumes that it
is the result of a partially completed transfer and attempts to
transfer the rest of the file. This is useful on a poor connec-
tion which keeps failing.
Note that this requires a commonly implemented, but non-standard,
version of the FTP protocol, so is not guaranteed to work on all
servers.
zfgcp [ -Gt ] remote-file local-file
zfgcp [ -Gt ] rfile1 ... ldir
This retrieves files from the remote server with arguments behav-
ing similarly to the cp command.
In the first form, copy remote-file from the server to the local
file local-file.
In the second form, copy all the remote files rfile1 ... into the
local directory ldir retaining the same basenames. This assumes
UNIX directory semantics.
Sending files
zfput [ -r ] file1 ...
Send all the file1 ... given separately to the remote server. If
a filename contains a `/', the full filename is used locally to
find the file, but only the basename is used for the remote file
name.
With the option -r, if any of the files are directories they are
sent recursively with all their subdirectories, including files
beginning with `.'. This requires that the remote machine under-
stand UNIX file semantics, since `/' is used as a directory sepa-
rator.
zfuput [ -vs ] file1 ...
As zfput, but only send files which are newer than their remote
equivalents, or if the remote file does not exist. The logic is
the same as for zfuget, but reversed between local and remote
files.
zfcput file1 ...
As zfput, but if any remote file already exists and is shorter
than the local equivalent, assume it is the result of an incom-
plete transfer and send the rest of the file to append to the ex-
isting part. As the FTP append command is part of the standard
set, this is in principle more likely to work than zfcget.
zfpcp local-file remote-file
zfpcp lfile1 ... rdir
This sends files to the remote server with arguments behaving
similarly to the cp command.
With two arguments, copy local-file to the server as remote-file.
With more than two arguments, copy all the local files lfile1 ...
into the existing remote directory rdir retaining the same base-
names. This assumes UNIX directory semantics.
A problem arises if you attempt to use zfpcp lfile1 rdir, i.e.
the second form of copying but with two arguments, as the command
has no simple way of knowing if rdir corresponds to a directory
or a filename. It attempts to resolve this in various ways.
First, if the rdir argument is `.' or `..' or ends in a slash, it
is assumed to be a directory. Secondly, if the operation of
copying to a remote file in the first form failed, and the remote
server sends back the expected failure code 553 and a reply in-
cluding the string `Is a directory', then zfpcp will retry using
the second form.
Closing the connection
zfclose
Close the connection.
Session management
zfsession [ -lvod ] [ sessname ]
Allows you to manage multiple FTP sessions at once. By default,
connections take place in a session called `default'; by giving
the command `zfsession sessname' you can change to a new or ex-
isting session with a name of your choice. The new session re-
members its own connection, as well as associated shell parame-
ters, and also the host/user parameters set by zfparams. Hence
you can have different sessions set up to connect to different
hosts, each remembering the appropriate host, user and password.
With no arguments, zfsession prints the name of the current ses-
sion; with the option -l it lists all sessions which currently
exist, and with the option -v it gives a verbose list showing the
host and directory for each session, where the current session is
marked with an asterisk. With -o, it will switch to the most re-
cent previous session.
With -d, the given session (or else the current one) is removed;
everything to do with it is completely forgotten. If it was the
only session, a new session called `default' is created and made
current. It is safest not to delete sessions while background
commands using zftp are active.
zftransfer sess1:file1 sess2:file2
Transfer files between two sessions; no local copy is made. The
file is read from the session sess1 as file1 and written to ses-
sion sess2 as file file2; file1 and file2 may be relative to the
current directories of the session. Either sess1 or sess2 may be
omitted (though the colon should be retained if there is a possi-
bility of a colon appearing in the file name) and defaults to the
current session; file2 may be omitted or may end with a slash, in
which case the basename of file1 will be added. The sessions
sess1 and sess2 must be distinct.
The operation is performed using pipes, so it is required that
the connections still be valid in a subshell, which is not the
case under versions of some operating systems, presumably due to
a system bug.
Bookmarks
The two functions zfmark and zfgoto allow you to `bookmark' the present
location (host, user and directory) of the current FTP connection for
later use. The file to be used for storing and retrieving bookmarks is
given by the parameter $ZFTP_BMFILE; if not set when one of the two
functions is called, it will be set to the file .zfbkmarks in the direc-
tory where your zsh startup files live (usually ~).
zfmark [ bookmark ]
If given an argument, mark the current host, user and directory
under the name bookmark for later use by zfgoto. If there is no
connection open, use the values for the last connection immedi-
ately before it was closed; it is an error if there was none.
Any existing bookmark under the same name will be silently re-
placed.
If not given an argument, list the existing bookmarks and the
points to which they refer in the form user@host:directory; this
is the format in which they are stored, and the file may be
edited directly.
zfgoto [ -n ] bookmark
Return to the location given by bookmark, as previously set by
zfmark. If the location has user `ftp' or `anonymous', open the
connection with zfanon, so that no password is required. If the
user and host parameters match those stored for the current ses-
sion, if any, those will be used, and again no password is re-
quired. Otherwise a password will be prompted for.
With the option -n, the bookmark is taken to be a nickname stored
by the ncftp program in its bookmark file, which is assumed to be
~/.ncftp/bookmarks. The function works identically in other
ways. Note that there is no mechanism for adding or modifying
ncftp bookmarks from the zftp functions.
Other functions
Mostly, these functions will not be called directly (apart from zfinit),
but are described here for completeness. You may wish to alter zftp_ch-
pwd and zftp_progress, in particular.
zfinit [ -n ]
As described above, this is used to initialize the zftp function
system. The -n option should be used if the zftp command is al-
ready built into the shell.
zfautocheck [ -dn ]
This function is called to implement automatic reopening behav-
iour, as described in more detail below. The options must appear
in the first argument; -n prevents the command from changing to
the old directory, while -d prevents it from setting the variable
do_close, which it otherwise does as a flag for automatically
closing the connection after a transfer. The host and directory
for the last session are stored in the variable $zflastsession,
but the internal host/user/password parameters must also be cor-
rectly set.
zfcd_match prefix suffix
This performs matching for completion of remote directory names.
If the remote server is UNIX, it will attempt to persuade the
server to list the remote directory with subdirectories marked,
which usually works but is not guaranteed. On other hosts it
simply calls zfget_match and hence completes all files, not just
directories. On some systems, directories may not even look like
filenames.
zfget_match prefix suffix
This performs matching for completion of remote filenames. It
caches files for the current directory (only) in the shell para-
meter $zftp_fcache. It is in the form to be called by the -K op-
tion of compctl, but also works when called from a widget-style
completion function with prefix and suffix set appropriately.
zfrglob varname
Perform remote globbing, as describes in more detail below. var-
name is the name of a variable containing the pattern to be ex-
panded; if there were any matches, the same variable will be set
to the expanded set of filenames on return.
zfrtime lfile rfile [ time ]
Set the local file lfile to have the same modification time as
the remote file rfile, or the explicit time time in FTP format
CCYYMMDDhhmmSS for the GMT timezone. This uses the shell's
zsh/datetime module to perform the conversion from GMT to local
time.
zftp_chpwd
This function is called every time a connection is opened, or
closed, or the remote directory changes. This version alters the
title bar of an xterm-compatible or sun-cmd terminal emulator to
reflect the local and remote hostnames and current directories.
It works best when combined with the function chpwd. In particu-
lar, a function of the form
chpwd() {
if [[ -n $ZFTP_USER ]]; then
zftp_chpwd
else
# usual chpwd e.g put host:directory in title bar
fi
}
fits in well.
zftp_progress
This function shows the status of the transfer. It will not
write anything unless the output is going to a terminal; however,
if you transfer files in the background, you should turn off
progress reports by hand using `zstyle ':zftp:*' progress none'.
Note also that if you alter it, any output must be to standard
error, as standard output may be a file being received. The form
of the progress meter, or whether it is used at all, can be con-
figured without altering the function, as described in the next
section.
zffcache
This is used to implement caching of files in the current direc-
tory for each session separately. It is used by zfget_match and
zfrglob.
MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES
Configuration
Various styles are available using the standard shell style mechanism,
described in zshmodules(1). Briefly, the command `zstyle ':zftp:*' style
value ...'. defines the style to have value value; more than one value
may be given, although that is not useful in the cases described here.
These values will then be used throughout the zftp function system. For
more precise control, the first argument, which gives a pattern that
matches contexts in which the style applies, can be modified to include
a particular function, as for example `:zftp:zfget': the style will then
have the given value only in the zfget function, and will override
styles set under `:zftp:*'. Note that only the top level function name,
as called by the user, is used; calling of lower level functions is
transparent to the user. Hence modifications to the title bar in
zftp_chpwd use the contexts :zftp:zfopen, :zftp:zfcd, etc., depending
where it was called from. The following styles are understood:
progress
Controls the way that zftp_progress reports on the progress of a
transfer. If empty, unset, or `none', no progress report is
made; if `bar' a growing bar of inverse video is shown; if `per-
cent' (or any other string, though this may change in future),
the percentage of the file transferred is shown. The bar meter
requires that the width of the terminal be available via the
$COLUMNS parameter (normally this is set automatically). If the
size of the file being transferred is not available, bar and per-
cent meters will simply show the number of bytes transferred so
far.
When zfinit is run, if this style is not defined for the context
:zftp:*, it will be set to `bar'.
update Specifies the minimum time interval between updates of the
progress meter in seconds. No update is made unless new data has
been received, so the actual time interval is limited only by
$ZFTP_TIMEOUT.
As described for progress, zfinit will force this to default to
1.
remote-glob
If set to `1', `yes' or `true', filename generation (globbing) is
performed on the remote machine instead of by zsh itself; see be-
low.
titlebar
If set to `1', `yes' or `true', zftp_chpwd will put the remote
host and remote directory into the titlebar of terminal emulators
such as xterm or sun-cmd that allow this.
As described for progress, zfinit will force this to default to
1.
chpwd If set to `1' `yes' or `true', zftp_chpwd will call the function
chpwd when a connection is closed. This is useful if the remote
host details were put into the terminal title bar by zftp_chpwd
and your usual chpwd also modifies the title bar.
When zfinit is run, it will determine whether chpwd exists and if
so it will set the default value for the style to 1 if none ex-
ists already.
Note that there is also an associative array zfconfig which contains
values used by the function system. This should not be modified or
overwritten.
Remote globbing
The commands for retrieving files usually perform filename generation
(globbing) on their arguments; this can be turned off by passing the op-
tion -G to each of the commands. Normally this operates by retrieving a
complete list of files for the directory in question, then matching
these locally against the pattern supplied. This has the advantage that
the full range of zsh patterns (respecting the setting of the option EX-
TENDED_GLOB) can be used. However, it means that the directory part of
a filename will not be expanded and must be given exactly. If the re-
mote server does not support the UNIX directory semantics, directory
handling is problematic and it is recommended that globbing only be used
within the current directory. The list of files in the current direc-
tory, if retrieved, will be cached, so that subsequent globs in the same
directory without an intervening zfcd are much faster.
If the remote-glob style (see above) is set, globbing is instead per-
formed on the remote host: the server is asked for a list of matching
files. This is highly dependent on how the server is implemented,
though typically UNIX servers will provide support for basic glob pat-
terns. This may in some cases be faster, as it avoids retrieving the
entire list of directory contents.
Automatic and temporary reopening
As described for the zfopen command, a subsequent zfopen with no parame-
ters will reopen the connection to the last host (this includes connec-
tions made with the zfanon command). Opened in this fashion, the con-
nection starts in the default remote directory and will remain open un-
til explicitly closed.
Automatic re-opening is also available. If a connection is not cur-
rently open and a command requiring a connection is given, the last con-
nection is implicitly reopened. In this case the directory which was
current when the connection was closed again becomes the current direc-
tory (unless, of course, the command given changes it). Automatic re-
opening will also take place if the connection was close by the remote
server for whatever reason (e.g. a timeout). It is not available if the
-1 option to zfopen or zfanon was used.
Furthermore, if the command issued is a file transfer, the connection
will be closed after the transfer is finished, hence providing a
one-shot mode for transfers. This does not apply to directory changing
or listing commands; for example a zfdir may reopen a connection but
will leave it open. Also, automatic closure will only ever happen in
the same command as automatic opening, i.e a zfdir directly followed by
a zfget will never close the connection automatically.
Information about the previous connection is given by the zfstat func-
tion. So, for example, if that reports:
Session: default
Not connected.
Last session: ftp.bar.com:/pub/textfiles
then the command zfget file.txt will attempt to reopen a connection to
ftp.bar.com, retrieve the file /pub/textfiles/file.txt, and immediately
close the connection again. On the other hand, zfcd .. will open the
connection in the directory /pub and leave it open.
Note that all the above is local to each session; if you return to a
previous session, the connection for that session is the one which will
be reopened.
Completion
Completion of local and remote files, directories, sessions and book-
marks is supported. The older, compctl-style completion is defined when
zfinit is called; support for the new widget-based completion system is
provided in the function Completion/Zsh/Command/_zftp, which should be
installed with the other functions of the completion system and hence
should automatically be available.
zsh 5.9 May 14, 2022 ZSHZFTPSYS(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:12:40 CET 2025.