Network Working Group B. Greenberg Request for Comments: 1037 S. Keene December 1987 NFILE - A File Access Protocol STATUS OF THIS MEMO This document includes a specification of the NFILE file access protocol and its underlying levels of protocol, the Token List Transport Layer and Byte Stream with Mark. The goal of this specification is to promote discussion of the ideas described here, and to encourage designers of future file protocols to take advantage of these ideas. A secondary goal is to make the specification available to sites that might benefit from implementing NFILE. The distribution of this document is unlimited. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. NFILE PROTOCOL LAYERING 4 3. OVERVIEW OF AN NFILE SESSION 5 4. NFILE CONTROL AND DATA CONNECTIONS 6 5. NFILE FILE OPENING MODES 7 6. NFILE CHARACTER SET 9 7. CONVENTIONS USED IN THIS DOCUMENT 10 7.1 Mapping Data Types Into Token List Representation 10 7.2 Format of NFILE Commands and Responses 10 7.3 Data Channel Handles and Direct File Identifiers 13 7.4 Syntax of File and Directory Pathname Arguments 13 7.5 Format of NFILE File Property/Value Pairs 14 8. NFILE COMMANDS 16 8.1 ABORT Command 16 8.2 CHANGE-PROPERTIES Command 16 8.3 CLOSE Command 17 8.4 COMPLETE Command 19 8.5 CONTINUE Command 20 Greenberg & Keene