Different results in LC with a file from 2 FTP programs

[Dave Cragg]

On 2 Dec 2014, at 13:54, Tiemo Hollmann TB <toolbook at kestner.de> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am downloading a ASCII txt file with "put URL tFile into tContent" from my
> server. Then I filter the content of the file in LC 6.5.2 to get the wanted
> data. I changed my FTP program on Windows to FileZilla because my old FTP
> program didn't had a SFTP protocol, which I wanted to use now. When
> uploading the same file which is locally 397 KB with the old FTP program in
> ASCII mode it increases on my server to 385 KB. When uploading it with
> FileZilla-SFTP in ASCII mode it shows the excat 397 KB in the server.
> 
> 
> 
> Here comes my issue. My LC fails processing the content of the same file,
> when it is uploaded with FileZilla, because after the filter command each
> line still has a "CR" at the end of the line, which is not there, when the
> same file was uploaded with the old FTP program. Usually I would have
> expected a "CR" at the line end, but I have never watched it and because it
> wasn't there with my old FTP program I coded without expecting a "CR" and
> now my program fails with the new format. It is easy to change my code, but
> there are a lot of licences out there at my customers, which I can't change
> that easy.

Tiemo,

It appears that Filezilla does nothing to the data content when transferring in ascii mode. There is some information here:

https://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Data_Type

That would explain why the file size didn't change when uploaded.

Normally, I would consider that a good thing. I always use binary mode in ftp to avoid any unexpected changes. However, in your case, if your application is set to handle the previous format of the uploaded file, I can see it will be a problem for existing users.

Can you compare the content of the same file uploaded with the previous ftp application with the file uploaded by Filezilla? I'm guessing that the previous ftp program converted LF (ascii 10) line endings to CRLF (ascii 13 + ascii 10). But it would be good to check. Then, if you are able to set the file content to match the previous format before uploading with Filezilla, you should be OK. For example, if my guess is correct, replace all linefeed characters with CRLF.

Cheers
Dave