List method annoyances

Not sure how to tag this, im guessing the first part is intended behavior, that just happens to be annoying and something i dont agree with, but second part may be a bug...

1. Enter list method commands (STAT/LIST/ETC) as raw commands is overruled by flashfxp, for example when upgrading to 3.6 MLSD is turned on for any site that used the default LIST method. The problem that has arisen with this is that when i try to enter LIST -alR as raw command, flashfxp overrules it and isntead issues MLSD. I do not think flashfxp should ever overrule something entered as a raw command (logically defeats the purpose no?). As i write this i decided to check the 'Calculate ftp space used..' feature, and apparently listing recursively is completely unavailible if the site is configured to use MLSD. Is there a reason that other list methods are overruled in raw commands when MLSD is selected? Is there a reason to assume that listing recursively is not availible when MLSD is selected? Both seem quite undesirable to me.

Instead of assuming listing recursively is unavalible in Calculate FTP Space Used, simply note next to the setting that it will use another method.


2. This is just something i noticed while fiddling with the above, i couldn't figure out at first why it was not sending the correct raw command. Anyway, i noticed that changes to the active site in regards to list methods (and possibly other things as well?) in the site manager do not take effect until after you reconnect to the site. I do not believe this was the case in previous versions, i remember numerous occasions when i had to fiddle with list/port-pasv/ssl settings while actively connected to a site to get things working correctly without needing to ever reconnect for a change to take effect. Again this seems to assume other methods are not avalible on the server when one is selected... infact when turning on MLSD after connecting to a site, even manually requesting a FEAT (was hoping it would trigger some kind of flag that put the site settings change into effect) doesnt help.


Suggestions: Never overrule a raw command, you can interpret it allowing flashfxp to set itself up to correctly parse the results as neccersary, but over ruling it defeats the purpose of having entered it as a raw command in the first place. As for the changes taking effect, i am not sure why they dont take affect immediately already? I dont see any reason why they should not.


It is somewhat disappointing to me, as a beta tester, to have not noticed some of these things prior to the release of the 3.6 final.

The reason this occurs is that the LIST command is actually macro which performs all of the complicated setup needed to list the directory, such as opening or listening for the data connection, getting and properly parsing the results.

When it comes to raw commands we simply use LIST as a metaphor for all of the different possible commands, list, stat, mlsd.. So that when LIST is used the right command based on the site configuration is used.

MLSD has some great advantages over LIST, however it does have a limitation of not supporting any of the same paramaters that LIST supported.

I think for cases such as calculate disk space and the recrusive list option is checked list should probably be overroad with LIST -alR, otherwise it doesn't really make much sense.

Indeed there are advantages to MLSD, but as you said there are also limitations in comparison to LIST, which is why it would be nice if raw command interpreted it (call the macro for LIST for example) rather than calling the macro for 'configured list method'.

Unfortunately due to the site manager list method settings not taking immediate effect, i cant even disable MLSD temporarily (tedious but non-the-less a work-around) in order to input the custom list command... which means i am forced to just turn it off permanently on the majority of sites.

While MLSD does offer some advantages, i think a big mistake was made by not supporting numerous features from LIST that are quite commonly used. I am sure i am not the only one that finds more and more reasons not to use MLSD... but anyway, thats a whole different story for a whole different forum.

MLSD supports UTF-8 while most ftp servers will not support UTF-8 while using LIST unless UTF-8 support was done as a hack or directly at the system level with UTF-8 filenames.

Switching MLSD to LIST for an active connection causes major issues when UTF-8 is enabled, not only that but the directory format for MLSD is completely different than that of LIST and it's not easy to switch between the two formats on the fly.

I didn't think of that the other day but I think thats why the recrusive listing method in calc disk space doesn't use LIST when MLSD is enabled, because it results are in a different format and causes problems.

I'll have to dig into this deeper when I return.

Hmm, i see, as long as flashfxp knows which list method is asked for the information in (and therefor which to expect results in) for that particular instance i didn't think that would be particularly troublesom.

I can certainly see how switching between UTF-8 and non UTF-8 on the fly due to list method change could cause problems though, since this is not something explicitly controlled by flashfxp.

I believe the best solution for me is to just disabled MLSD on sites where i need to perform such actions.