7.7  ncftp -- NOW YOU TELL ME!

     
If you're lucky, the people who run your host system or public-access 
site have installed a program called ncftp, which takes some of the edges 
off the ftp process. 

For starters, when you use ncftp instead of plain old ftp, you no longer 
have to worry about misspelling "anonymous" when you connect.  The 
program does it for you.  And once you're in, instead of getting line 
after line filled with dashes, x's, r's and d's, you only get listings of 
the files or directories themselves (if you're used to MS-DOS, the 
display you get will be very similar to that produced by the dir/w 
command).  The program even creates a list of the ftp sites you've used 
most recently, so you can pick from that list, instead of trying to 
remember some incredibly complex ftp site name. 

Launching the program, assuming your site has it, is easy.  At the 
command prompt, type 

     ncftp sitename

where "sitename" is the site you want to reach (alternately, you could 
type just ncftp and then use its open command).  Once connected, you can 
use the same ftp commands you've become used to, such as ls, get and 
mget.  Entries that end in a / are directories to which you can switch 
with cd; others are files you can get. A couple of useful ncftp commands 
include type, which lets you change the type of file transfer (from ASCII 
to binary for example) and size, which lets you see how large a file is 
before you get it, for example

     size declaration.txt

would tell you how large the declaration.txt file is before you get it.  
When you say "bye" to disconnect from a site, ncftp remembers the last 
directory you were in, so that the next time you connect to the site, you 
are put back into that directory automatically. If you type 

     help

you'll get a list of files you can read to extend the power of the 
program even further.