PERL Miscellaneous - Net::FTP: cwd(' ')

Author

Net::FTP: cwd(' ')

Josef Moellers

2005-06-08, 8:58 am

Hi,

I have this problem:

I'd like to access a directory named ' ' (a single blank) on an ftp serve=
r.
I can connect all right, but the $ftp->cwd(' '), while succeeding, only=20
moves me to /, rather than into the directory.
I've also tried '" "' and '\ ' to no avail.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Net::FTP;

my $host =3D 'X.Y.Z';
my $username =3D 'anonymous';
my $password =3D 'anonymous';

my $dir =3D ' ';

$ftp=3DNet::FTP->new($host,Timeout=3D>240) or die "Cannot connect";
print "Connected\n";

$ftp->login($username, $password) or die "Cannot login";
print "Logged in\n";

$ftp->cwd($dir) or die "Cannot chdir to blank";
print "Now in ", $ftp->pwd, "\n";

my @files =3D $ftp->ls or die "Cannot get file list";
foreach (@files) {
print ">$_<\n";
}
$ftp->quit;

--=20
Josef M=F6llers (Pinguinpfleger bei FSC)
If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize
-- T. Pratchett

Damian James

2005-06-08, 8:58 am

On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 10:36:23 +0200, Josef Moellers said:
>
> I'd like to access a directory named ' ' (a single blank) on an ftp server.
> I can connect all right, but the $ftp->cwd(' '), while succeeding, only
> moves me to /, rather than into the directory.
> I've also tried '" "' and '\ ' to no avail.
>

Hmmm

puli% mkdir foo
puli% mkdir foo/\
puli% touch foo/\ /bar
puli% perl -le 'system "ls $_" for glob "test/*"'

puli% perl -le 's/[ ]/\\$&/, system "ls $_" for glob "foo/*"'
bar

Remember that to put a literal backslash in a string, even in single
quotes, you need to escape it. So that should be '\\ '.

--damian

Josef Moellers

2005-06-08, 8:58 am

Damian James wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 10:36:23 +0200, Josef Moellers said:
>=20
ver.[color=darkred]
[color=darkred]
>=20
>=20
> Hmmm
>=20
> puli% mkdir foo
> puli% mkdir foo/\=20
> puli% touch foo/\ /bar
> puli% perl -le 'system "ls $_" for glob "test/*"'
>=20
> puli% perl -le 's/[ ]/\\$&/, system "ls $_" for glob "foo/*"'
> bar
>=20
>=20
> Remember that to put a literal backslash in a string, even in single
> quotes, you need to escape it. So that should be '\\ '.

Thanks for the hint, but it seems to be a special case of Net::FTP:

$dir =3D "/" unless defined($dir) && $dir =3D~ /\S/;

If I remove the check for a non-blank character, I get

"Invalid number of arguments." as the result of $ftp->message.

None of '\ ', '\\ ', '" "' work.

Sigh,

Josef
--=20
Josef M=F6llers (Pinguinpfleger bei FSC)
If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize
-- T. Pratchett

Sisyphus

2005-06-08, 3:59 pm

"Josef Moellers" <josef.moellers@fujitsu-siemens.com> wrote in message
news:d86agm$7s6$1@nntp.fujitsu-siemens.com...
Hi,

I have this problem:

I'd like to access a directory named ' ' (a single blank) on an ftp server.
--------------------

Heh ... I guess it *is* a problem for you .... but the person with the
*real* problem is the braindead halfsmart that gave it that name :-)

G'luck.

Cheers,
Rob

Damian James

2005-06-08, 8:57 pm

On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 12:57:42 +0200, Josef Moellers said:
> ...
> Thanks for the hint, but it seems to be a special case of Net::FTP:
>
> $dir =3D "/" unless defined($dir) && $dir =3D~ /\S/;

Well, your string would pass that test if it still contains a backslash.

If you're going over the code in Net::FTP, you'll also want to look at
Net::Cmd, but you probably knew that.

> If I remove the check for a non-blank character, I get
> "Invalid number of arguments." as the result of $ftp->message.
> None of '\ ', '\\ ', '" "' work.

What happens when you try to cwd into ' ' with an interactive ftp client?

--damian

Josef Moellers

2005-06-09, 8:57 am

Damian James wrote:

>=20
>=20
> What happens when you try to cwd into ' ' with an interactive ftp clien=
t?

Hmm, good question.
I thought that I had been able to do a 'cd " "' and that would work.=20
When I try this now, I get exactly the same error messages perl gives me.=

I did try this on various systems, though, two of them were different=20
releases of SuSE Linux (9.0 and 9.1), and I think I also tried this on a =

proprietary system. Maybe it worked on the latter.

I think I'll dig through the Net::Ftp, Net::Cmd and related stuff some mo=
re.
It has now become more of an academic question: I have talked to the=20
admin of the remote system and she changed the directory name to=20
something more accessable.

Josef
--=20
Josef M=F6llers (Pinguinpfleger bei FSC)
If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize
-- T. Pratchett

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