Hi Ken, Thanks for all of your efforts - much appreciated. Even with  
your suggestion I get nothing worthwhile as you can see - with Tiger  
4.5 on a Mac Mini:

Last login: Fri Mar 10 06:16:06 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
ip68-7-56-223:~ joelewiswilkins$ curl -v -P --url "ftp://topo.math.u- 
psud.fr/pub/lcs/fb/FBdigests2006/FBD_2006-02.gz" -o ~/Desktop/ 
FBD_2006-02.gz
* About to connect() to topo.math.u-psud.fr port 21
*   Trying 129.175.50.180... * connected
* Connected to topo.math.u-psud.fr (129.175.50.180) port 21
< 220 topo FTP server (Version 5.105 Thu Sep 20 02:01:48 MET DST  
2001) ready.
 > USER anonymous
< 331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
 > PASS curl_by_daniel@...
< 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
* We have successfully logged in
 > PWD
< 257 "/" is current directory.
* Entry path is '/'
* protocol connect phase DONE
* DO phase starts
 > CWD pub
< 250 CWD command successful.
 > CWD lcs
< 250 CWD command successful.
 > CWD fb
< 250 CWD command successful.
 > CWD FBdigests2006
< 250 CWD command successful.
* getaddrinfo(3) failed for --url:0
* Unknown error: 0
* DO phase is comlete
* Remembering we are in dir pub/lcs/fb/FBdigests2006/FBD_2006-02.gz
   % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time      
Time  Current
                                  Dload  Upload   Total   Spent     
Left  Speed
   0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:--  0:00:02  
--:--:--     0* Connection #0 to host topo.math.u-psud.fr left intact

curl: (30) Unknown error: 0
 > QUIT
< 221 Goodbye.
* Closing connection #0
ip68-7-56-223:~ joelewiswilkins$


On Mar 10, 2006, at 9:39 AM, Ken Shmidheiser wrote:

> Larry wrote:
>
>> Following up Ken's suggestion that we exploit the
>> linux/unix utility  "curl",
>> my best shot is to use curl in a unix
>> terminal window with the syntax:
>
> Larry,
>
> Rather than redirecting output to a file with a Unix ">"  
> redirector, with curl I believe you should use curl's built-in "-o"  
> switch to write to an output file.
>
> Please note that for the following parameters:
>
> -v is the same as --verbose
>
> -P is the same as --ftpport
>
> I prefer the curl shorthand due to FB's 255-byte On Unix command  
> limitation.
>
> Here is the one-liner broken up FB fashion because my email client  
> parses the line otherwise. This example writes the file to your  
> Desktop.
>
> curl -v -P --url ¬
> "ftp://topo.math.u-psud.fr/pub/lcs/fb/FBdigests2006/FBD_2006-02.gz" ¬
> -o ~/Desktop/FBD_2006-02.gz
>
> R.P. can let me know if I should keep my day job.
>
> Ken
>
> --
>