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How to Find the Files You Need on an FTP Server

Efficient search for information resources (the addresses of FTP servers where the necessary files are located, and the files themselves) is a rather complicated problem. In general, searching for files on FTP servers is reminiscent of a situation where a reader of a public library would start searching for the desired book not in the central catalog, but by examining book shelves. And on each of them he would find a list of books only for this rack. Something like this was the search for information on the Internet for a significant part of the time of its existence: a lot of information, but it is extremely difficult to find the right one.

Most FTP servers do not have a list of files available from the outside. Sometimes the only way to find the software you need is to expand the directories one by one and examine their contents. Since the format of file names on an FTP server varies depending on the computer's operating system, you can find different combinations of characters as names. If, for example, the server is built on a UNIX system, these will be combinations of upper and lower case characters, and for a system running a VMS operating system (Digital Corporation's minicomputers), file names will be presented only in uppercase letters. Accordingly, for PC and Macintosh, file names will follow the rules adopted in DOS and Mac System operating systems. On some computers, especially those with large amounts of information, there is an index of available files with brief annotations about what each one is. This can be extremely useful for quickly finding the files you need, so as a tip, we can recommend that you start exploring the contents of directories by looking for a file called INDEX. Also, don't ignore files named README (or read.me, readme.txt, etc.). These files most often store information about the contents of directories or about the FTP server itself. It is recommended that you always copy the README file first to familiarize yourself with its contents. These files are on the server for a reason. If a user has questions about this server, they can contact its administrator using an email address with the recipient name "postmaster". For example, for an FTP server named rs.internic.net, questions should be directed to [email protected] Some servers have more than one person in charge, so the specific name can be found in the README file, or it is reported when registering on that server.

Many FTP servers currently provide FTP access through the WWW interface using a regular browser. In this case, the user has a list of files and folders on the screen and the ability to move up and down the folders. Typically, the pub folder and all of its contents are publicly accessible on an FTP server. If you have rights, you can access other folders. There are servers that provide search services for FTP servers, unfortunately, often you need to know the exact name of the required file.

Finding Files on FTP Servers

Many Internet users, when searching for necessary files and programs, look for html pages by their content, not knowing about the existence of search tools that allow you to search for files on FTP servers by the names of the files and directories themselves. Indeed, if you are looking for a description of a program, then you should do it on Web servers. If you know the name of the program and are looking for a server from which it can be downloaded, then it is more convenient to use the FTP resource search engine. One of the popular systems for finding files is the resource http://www.filesearch.ru/

On fig. Figure 6 shows the result of searching for FTP servers from which you can download the CuteFTP program.

Online http://www.filesearch.ru/ you can also find a list of the largest FTP servers. The first place in the ranking, of course, belongs to a resource that stores MP3 files, and its volume is simply amazing - more than 2 thousand gigabytes!

Conclusion

FTP has its advantages and disadvantages. The main drawback is that, unlike a Web service, on an FTP server you get a minimum of additional information about resources - all information is presented as a list of files on the remote computer.

If you download files directly from Web pages using the HTTP protocol (and do not resort to special resume programs), then it is quite difficult to download a large file with a slow connection. The fact is that the procedure for transferring files in HTTP has a big minus in the form of the absence of such a useful function as reget (the resume function). This means that if the connection fails while using the HTTP protocol, you will have to download the file from the beginning. When using the FTP protocol, you can use the Reget function and continue downloading from where you left off. Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, it is extremely important to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each of the protocols.

Searching for files on FTP servers - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "File search on FTP servers" 2017, 2018.

Often you need to organize a search on an FTP server. In order to search quickly, the FTP server scans and puts the names of all files and their paths into one file or database table. Using such a list, searching is much easier than scanning the entire host each time. On the other hand, you might be interested in scanning your own FTP host to get an idea of ​​its organization. This will optimize or reorganize its structure.

Let's create a small web application consisting of two files: config.php(configuration file containing parameters for connecting to an FTP server and setting up a connection) and index.php, which is directly an FTP scanner.

Configuration file config.php

"
;

print_r($filename); 
echo "