DOS ftp listing to local file

cmddosftp

I'm trying to find a way to see if a file exists on an ftp site via DOS. I tried a get command on the file hoping that if it didn't exist it wouldn't download it to my local directory. However it seams that it still does, but it's an empty file. This doesn't work for me however because the file I'm looking for is just a empty trigger file so I can't tell the difference.

I would like to dump a listing ls of the ftp directory to a text file on my local drive and so I try
ls > listing.txt.
It creates the listing.txt file locally but it's always empty even though there are files on the ftp site.

What are my options with this?

I have used dir > listing.txt and ls > listing.txt and every time listing.txt is empty even though there are files in the directories I'm running those commands on.

Sorry if I didn't make this clear, but I'm trying to get the listing for an automated process and not simply for my visual when manually doing this.

Best Answer

Unless you're on FreeDOS, you're probably not using DOS. Perhaps you're using ftp.exe in the windows console? If that's the case, don't use a normal file redirect. Instead check here the syntax for ls in the standard Windows ftp client:

ls [RemoteDirectory] [LocalFile]

So you can do a ls . listing.txt to get a list of files in the current remote directory. The listing.txt file will appear in your user directory, e.g. c:\Users\user.

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Windows – How to get current date/time on the Windows command line in a suitable format for usage in a file/folder name

See Windows Batch File (.bat) to get current date in MMDDYYYY format:

@echo off
For /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set mydate=%%c-%%a-%%b)
For /f "tokens=1-2 delims=/:" %%a in ('time /t') do (set mytime=%%a%%b)
echo %mydate%_%mytime%

If you prefer the time in 24 hour/military format, you can replace the second FOR line with this:

For /f "tokens=1-2 delims=/:" %%a in ("%TIME%") do (set mytime=%%a%%b)

C:> .\date.bat
2008-10-14_0642

If you want the date independently of the region day/month order, you can use "WMIC os GET LocalDateTime" as a source, since it's in ISO order:

@echo off
for /F "usebackq tokens=1,2 delims==" %%i in (`wmic os get LocalDateTime /VALUE 2^>NUL`) do if '.%%i.'=='.LocalDateTime.' set ldt=%%j
set ldt=%ldt:~0,4%-%ldt:~4,2%-%ldt:~6,2% %ldt:~8,2%:%ldt:~10,2%:%ldt:~12,6%
echo Local date is [%ldt%]

C:>test.cmd
Local date is [2012-06-19 10:23:47.048]

Python – Determine if a listing is a directory or file in Python over FTP

Unfortunately FTP doesn't have a command to list just folders so parsing the results you get from ftp.dir() would be 'best'.

A simple app assuming a standard result from ls (not a windows ftp)

from ftplib import FTP

ftp = FTP(host, user, passwd)
for r in ftp.dir():
    if r.upper().startswith('D'):
        print r[58:]  # Starting point

Standard FTP Commands

Custom FTP Commands

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – How to get current date/time on the Windows command line in a suitable format for usage in a file/folder name

Python – Determine if a listing is a directory or file in Python over FTP

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