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Asked: 2026-05-13T15:28:47+00:00

I am trying to copy C source files from a vms alpha to a

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I am trying to copy C source files from a vms alpha to a windows machine to allow easier editing of the code. (VMS editor is just a text editor and it would be nice to have syntax highlighting etc)

I can copy this across using Exceed FTP and this handles the issue of duplicate filenames with version suffix that vms has:

  • File.c;1
  • File.c;2
  • Flle.c;3

But when I open a file I’ve transferred, all the line breaks have been lost and the entire file is just one line.

Can anyone recommend a solution to this or offer any hints?

Thanks in advance

ps. I need to be able to copy the files back to vms and still maintain format.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It may be off interest by now, but in case you still wonder about “one-line” text files after FTP transfer.

    The short answer: force the FTP transfer mode to ASCII (or text) in your FTP client. This will make sure that the C-files you transferring (in fac all files) are treated as text, otherwise they’re assumed to be binary, so you get a byte-stream.

    Long answer: There’re 2 FTP transfer modes: ASCII/text and binary/image. The default is sometimes clent or server-specific.

    Many clients have Auto-mode that interprets the file extension to set the proper transfer mode (.TXT,.CSV etc..)

    When you access the VMS server via FTP client, too often the [Win-based] client is not VMS friendy, so it does not parse the file-list properly. Thus it gets confused by version number appended to the “usual” file-name:
    filename.ext;ver ==> file.c;1

    So instead of seeing .C (and assuming text), it sees .C;1 and thinks it’s binary.

    I use Filezilla FTP client to/from VMS and so far it does it properly (though version-support is not as I’d sometimes like).

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