Beechglen Development Inc. - FTP File Attributes

Beechglen Development Inc.
3862 Race Road - Cincinnati, Ohio 45211 - (513) 922-0509 - Fax (513) 347-2834

Controlling File Attributes for FTP File Transfers

One prominent difference between MPE and other operating systems is the file system. MPE Files are not just a file name and a string of bits. The file system keeps track of attributes such as record size, file type, file code, etc. This can pose a problem when transferring files from another system to your HPe3000.

The FTP server for MPE provides a mechanism to control the default file attributes through the configuration file BLDPARMS.ARPA.SYS which contains the file attributes you would type in yourself using the :FILE or :BUILD command. Here is a sample BLDPARMS file.

;rec=-80,,f,ascii;disc=204800
;rec=128,,f,binary;disc=204800

The first line of the file is always employed for ASCII type file transfers. BINARY transfers will use the second line of the file to obtain file characteristics. Only the first two lines of the file are used. Any other lines contained in the file will be ignored and can be used as comments to document the file.

But not all ASCII files are 80-byte files, and some files require more than 204,800 records. The MPE implementation of FTP allows for designating file parameters by appending them to the filename on the PUT command.

ftp> ascii
ftp> put c:\document\doc1.txt hpfile;rec=-72,,f,ascii;disc=500000

Note that there is no space between the file name and the build parameters. This is critical because FTP client uses a space as the delimiter and anything following a space in the remote file name is truncated.