🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <EMV.91Jun25175321@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com 
(Ed Vielmetti) writes:

>19910411185329 f nis.nsf.net,anonymous,guest . $read.me 1024 postmaster
>
>$date f $site $dir $file $size $owner
>$date w $site $dir $wildcard $owner
>$date d $site $dir $owner

A couple of suggestions:

1. The rcp format host:directory/file is well established and marginally
shorter. It extends to user@host:directory/file and you could add
a convention like user,password@host:directory/file (as well as allowing
wildcards in file or ending at / for a directory, which makes the
"f,w,d" type field redundant though it might as well stay).

2. I don't know if "owner" is really much use. If it is, then "group"
would probably be equally relevant.

3. (More important) Using space as the delimiter between fields
does not allow for file and directory names that include spaces
(common with Mac software). In modifying the Mark Moraes filters
that you sent me I got around this by using TAB to separate the
site:directory/file field from size and date fields. For comp.archives
you would need something like "" around any field that does contain
a space (usually omitted since the large majority don't contain
a space, but at least allow for it).

This may seem unimportant from current experience with anonymous
ftp archives, but tools developed will also be applied to archives
that are available from non-anonymous ftp and the way things are
going all files on any kind of machine are going to be mounted on
the net somewhere or other.

Also some efforts at classifying files in ftp archives may rely
on linking them to long descriptive directory names (with blanks).
e.g. The one line descriptions available from dls could simply
be linked as alternative names in another directory.

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