FTP operations may be conducted from the UNIX command line, by DOS, Windows or Mac programs that offer menu-driven selections to the user, and by the browser application running on the Web. Links contained on these pages to information or other organizations are presented as a service and neither constitute nor imply endorsement or warranty. Generally, disk space on any computer system is a state of apparent chaos.
Computer directories on large-space servers are often in a similar state.
Originally, command-line FTP was not only the only way to transfer files from a remote computer to your computer, it was also the method by which the researcher moved from directory to directory, folder to folder, file to file, searching for needed information. All work is done from the UNIX prompt and requires a working knowledge of UNIX file manipulation, environment, and output commands. Researchers need to be fluent with mkdir, cd, pwd, cat, get and put . Archie was designed at McGill University in Canada. The Archie server is a system that indexes FTP sites, listing the files that are available at each site.