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RE: FTP-download of zero size files

From: Bill Mercer <bmercer_at_nccer.org>
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:58:42 +0000

>I really do not understand the purpose of that strange curl behavior.

I have a situation where zero-byte files are useful, and I use wget in that case for exactly this reason.

For example, if there's a regularly scheduled transfer, the complete lack of a file would be ambiguous, as it could mean there was no data to transfer, or it could mean the transfer failed to run, or something else. A zero-byte file shows that the process did run, and there wasn't anything to retrieve.

I think this is basically a side-effect of the way curl handles ftp files, and since it's a relatively unused option, priorities are on other bugs and features. Of course, since this is an open source project, you can always fix the issue yourself :)

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Received on 2011-12-21