The File Transfer Protocol July 8, 1972 file An ordered set of computer data (including programs) of arbitrary length uniquely identified by a pathname. mode The mode in which data is to be transferred via the data connection. The mode defines the data format including EOR and EOF. The transfer modes defined in FTP are described in Section III.A. NVT The Network Virtual Terminal as defined in the ARPANET TELNET Protocol. NVFS The Network Virtual File System. A concept which defines a standard network file system with standard commands and pathname conventions. FTP only partially embraces the NFS concept at this time. pathname Pathname is defined to be the character string which must be input to a file system by a user in order to identify a file. Pathname normally contains device and/or directory names, and file name specification. FTP does not yet specify a standard pathname convention. Each user must follow the file naming conventions of hte file systems he wishes to use. record A sequential file may be structured as a number of contiguous parts called records. Record structures are supported by FTP but are not mandatory. reply A reply is an acknowledgment (positive or negative) sent from server to user via the telnet connections in response to FTP commands. The general form of a reply is a completion code (including error codes) followed by an ASCII text string. The codes are for use by programs and the text is for human users. server-FTP process A process or set of processes which perform the function of file transfer in cooperation with a user-FTP process. The server-FTP process must interpret and respond to user commands and initiate the data connection.