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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T17:17:49+00:00

Here’s what i’m trying to do: I what to have some FTP functionality in

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Here’s what i’m trying to do:

I what to have some FTP functionality in one of my apps (this is just for myself, not a business application or such) and since I didn’t wanted to write all that FTP request/response code for myself, I (being the lazy man I am) search the internet for an FTP wrapper.
I have found this DLL.

This is all very great, works like a charm. Except for one thing: when I request the LastWriteTime of a specific file ON the FTP server, the DLL is giving me strange dates (namely, prints out fictional dates). I’ve been able to find the problem. Whenever you send a request to the FTP server, it sends back a one line response, which has a very special format. Now what i’ve been able to gather, this format is different for most of the servers, my wrapper DLL comes with 6 pre-defined response formats, but my FTP server sends back a 7th one. Here’s a response to a request and the REGEX formats:

-rw-r--r--    1 user   user          594 Jun 11 03:44 random_log.file

here are my regex parsing formats:

 "(?<dir>[\-d])(?<permission>([\-r][\-w][\-xs]){3})\s+\d+\s+\w+\s+\w+\s+(?<size>\d+)\s+(?<timestamp>\w+\s+\d+\s+\d{4})\s+(?<name>.+)", _
 "(?<dir>[\-d])(?<permission>([\-r][\-w][\-xs]){3})\s+\d+\s+\d+\s+(?<size>\d+)\s+(?<timestamp>\w+\s+\d+\s+\d{4})\s+(?<name>.+)", _
 "(?<dir>[\-d])(?<permission>([\-r][\-w][\-xs]){3})\s+\d+\s+\d+\s+(?<size>\d+)\s+(?<timestamp>\w+\s+\d+\s+\d{1,2}:\d{2})\s+(?<name>.+)", _
 "(?<dir>[\-d])(?<permission>([\-r][\-w][\-xs]){3})\s+\d+\s+\w+\s+\w+\s+(?<size>\d+)\s+(?<timestamp>\w+\s+\d+\s+\d{1,2}:\d{2})\s+(?<name>.+)", _
 "(?<dir>[\-d])(?<permission>([\-r][\-w][\-xs]){3})(\s+)(?<size>(\d+))(\s+)(?<ctbit>(\w+\s\w+))(\s+)(?<size2>(\d+))\s+(?<timestamp>\w+\s+\d+\s+\d{2}:\d{2})\s+(?<name>.+)", _
 "(?<timestamp>\d{2}\-\d{2}\-\d{2}\s+\d{2}:\d{2}[Aa|Pp][mM])\s+(?<dir>\<\w+\>){0,1}(?<size>\d+){0,1}\s+(?<name>.+)"

Non of these seem to be able to parse the datetime correctly and since I have no idea how to do that, can a REGEX pro please write me a ParsingFormat that would be able to parse the above FTP response?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Both a hand-check and irb check of the fourth format shows that it does match:

    > re=/(?<dir>[\-d])(?<permission>([\-r][\-w][\-xs]){3})\s+\d+\s+\w+\s+\w+\s+(?<size>\d+)\s+(?<timestamp>\w+\s+\d+\s+\d{1,2}:\d{2})\s+(?<name>.+)/
=> /(?<dir>[\-d])(?<permission>([\-r][\-w][\-xs]){3})\s+\d+\s+\w+\s+\w+\s+(?<size>\d+)\s+(?<timestamp>\w+\s+\d+\s+\d{1,2}:\d{2})\s+(?<name>.+)/
> m=re.match("-rw-r--r--    1 user   user          594 Jun 11 03:44 random_log.file")
=> #<MatchData "-rw-r--r--    1 user   user          594 Jun 11 03:44 random_log.file" dir:"-" permission:"rw-r--r--" size:"594" timestamp:"Jun 11 03:44" name:"random_log.file">
> m['dir']
=> "-"
> m['permission']
=> "rw-r--r--"
> m['size']
=> "594"
> m['timestamp']
=> "Jun 11 03:44"
> m['name']
=> "random_log.file"
>

    I think the pile of regular expressions are fine. Perhaps you need to look elsewhere for the problem.

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