Question

I think we have a problem in our FTP scripts that pull files from a remote server to a local machine. I couldn’t find an answer in their knowledge base, nor scripting documentation.

We are doing an MGET *.* and then a MDELETE *.* immediately after it. I think what is happening is that, while we are copying files from the server, additional files are copied into the same directory and then the delete command deletes everything from the server. So we end up deleting file we never copied down.

Is there a straight-forward way to delete only the files that were copied, or is it going to be some sort of hack job where we generate a dynamic delete script based on what we actually copied down?

Answers that are product specific would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

Here were the options that I came up with and what I ended up doing.

1. Rename the extension on the server, copy the renamed files, and then delete the renamed files. This could not work because there is no FTP rename command that works with wildcards (Windows rename command will by the way).
2. Move the files to a subdirectory on the server, copy the files from that location, and then delete from the remote location. This could not work because there is no FTP command to move the files on the remote server.
3. Copy the files down in one script and SHELL a batch file on the local side that dynamically builds a script to connect to the server and delete the files that were copied down. This is the solution I ended up using to solve this problem.