| binary mode
FTP is a great way to transfer files
over the Internet. Unfortunately, not every file is as Net-ready as it
could be. Text files (such as those in ASCII) are a good example. Simply
send a text file as a mere stream of binary data to another machine, and
you've got a recipe for garble. Why? Because ASCII and other text formats
don't encode end-of-line information into their data--they simply use a
special character. For that reason, FTP clients almost always have the
option to send files as text or binary. In text mode, the data gets
translated properly so it arrives in a readable format. However,
performing this translation on an executable or ZIP file would corrupt
that data. For these types of files, you'd use binary mode. Many FTP
clients include an autodetect feature that can switch the software between
modes based on the file's extension. |