RFC 448 (rfc448) - Page 3 of 3

Print files in FTP

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RFC 448                    PRINT FILES IN FTP              February 1973


 VFC Case      |     FORMat            |     STRUcture
-------------------------------------------------------------------
  N            |     Unformatted       |     Record structure
               |     -                 |     -
  T            |     Unformatted       |     File structure
               |     -                 |     -
  A            |     Print File        |     Record structure
               |     -                 |     -

Thus, the authors of RJE intended to use the _structure_ attribute to
resolve Cases N and T.  This is perhaps a reasonable choice, but we
should understand the consequences and make them explicit within the FTP
document.

Assume for the moment that we want to maintain perfect consistency
between FTP and RJE.  An FTP server which uses ASA VFC internally should
convert _every_ (Unformatted, Unstructured) file it receives to an
internal print file!  That is, the file must be mapped into a set of
physical lines (which are really logical records internally), and an ASA
VFC character must be appended to the beginning of each line before it
is stored.  Note that this implies that the default file structure in
FTP should be changed to _record_structure_.  (This reinforces the point
made by Wayne Hathaway in RFC 414 that if a Tenex user transmits a
source file to an IBM host and expects to manipulate it in some useful
way, he'd better send it with _record_ structure.)

ANOTHER CHOICE
--------------

    If the loss of (unformatted, unstructured) as a simple default case
is too offensive, we can simply change FTP to include three formats
corresponding to Cases N, A, and T.  RJE would be changed
correspondingly.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
---------------

    Discussions with Steve Wolfe, Jon Postel, and Eric Harslem were very
helpful in clarifying the print file problem in FTP.

RTB/gjm


       [ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
       [ into the online RFC archives by Alex McKenzie with    ]
       [ support from GTE, formerly BBN Corp.             9/99 ]





Braden
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