FTP Transfer Type

[Pozzi]

ASCII v Binary

Could someone explain the differences and inparticular the problems if the wrong transfer type is used when transfering files?

Regards,

[Mark Sreeves]

ASCII assumes the file(s) are text and hence a whole number of bytes

(i'm not sure if extra checking is used though)

Transfering binary files using ASCII mode is more likely to incur errors

If you transfer a text file useing binary it can get messed up.

The problem is that different machines use different codetables, so if you would get the text file useing binary and then open it on your own computer you get garbage(because whats 'A' on your windows machine might be a '&' on another machine).

(Transfers from a Windows to a Windows machine, AS400 to AS400 etc, go ok in binary because then all the machines use the same codetable).


If you transfer anything that is binary (pictures, executables, zip files) etc in ascii it wont work because text uses only 7bits and binary uses 8bits, so the result would be messed up.