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Easily Parsed LIST Format (EPLF)
draft-bernstein-eplf-05

Document Type Expired Internet-Draft (individual)
Expired & archived
Author D. J. Bernstein
Last updated 1997-02-03 (Latest revision 1998-08-14)
RFC stream (None)
Intended RFC status (None)
Formats
Stream Stream state (No stream defined)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
RFC Editor Note (None)
IESG IESG state Expired
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
Send notices to (None)

This Internet-Draft is no longer active. A copy of the expired Internet-Draft is available in these formats:

Abstract

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) supports two commands that list files: NLST and LIST. The NLST response is easy to parse but provides very little information. The LIST response provides more information, but in a format that varies from system to system. The most common LIST formats are undocumented and impossible to parse reliably. This document defines Easily Parsed LIST Format (EPLF), a format for the LIST response that is usable by humans yet easy for programs to handle. This format is supported by anonftpd, a secure FTP server. One visible advantage of EPLF is that a browser can easily display dates in the viewer's time zone and native language. EPLF also makes it straightforward for an indexing program to automatically traverse an FTP area and for a mirroring program to avoid downloading the same file twice.

Authors

D. J. Bernstein

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)