Patrick Elliott wrote:
> In article <40706b92@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> 
>>You also need to upload it in "binary" mode, if you're not already.
>>
> You know.. I never quite understood why such and option even existed. If 
> I upload a text file in binary mode is it going to explode or something? 
> lol Seriously, the option of which of the two to use only adds confusion 
> and makes it more likely that people will screw something up. Data is 
> data and all of it is basically binary anyway, the servers don't bloody 
> care.

Keep in mind that FTP was originated in 1971 (RFC172), or before.  At 
the time not every machine had words that were powers of 2 (such as 9 
and 36?).

Text mode transfers indicated that the client/server should convert each 
"character" to it's local interpretation; an implied conversion.  ASCII 
to/from EBCIDC (?) might be one such example.

But for binary data --  when transferring from a 16 bit to a 36 bit 
computer (for example), some conversion would be required, and the 
standard (wisely I think) did not pick one.

That said, though, don't most FTP clients default to binary?

M

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