FTP to list files

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi Guys,

Am writing a FTP script to download file from a remote server.

There are 3 files in the target directory.
eg.

bfg234.2
vfg345.1
abc123.1
abc123.2

I need to get the file "abc123.2". The number could be increasing everytime.I need to get the latest file. can this be done ?

2

try

filename=$(
  ftp  <<-EOF | cut -c12-22 | sort | tail -1
  open remoteserver
  USER username 
  PASS password
  dir abc*
EOF  
)

The format of what gets returned will depend on the kind of ftp server. Not all ftp's behave precisely the same. e.g., mainframes, windows, and UNIX may have different formats.

So change

cut -c12-22

to get the filename out of the string. Experiment by changing the numbers.

Trailing spaces are ok.