re: [MacPerl] macftp.pl routines and Net::FTP installation

[schinder@pjstoaster.pg.md.us (Paul Schinder)]

Timothy S Andvaag/srci/Stentor writes:
} I wanted to ftp some files in perl, however the particular ftp server I use 
} needs you to log in as anonymous, then issue the acct, user, pass commands 
} (these are at the end of this message to be possibly pasted into your own 
} macftp.pl, or more hopefully in the main distribution).  This was after 
} spending some time trying to get the Net::FTP module working which resulted in 
} these questions which I am curious about:
} 
} 1. Has anyone used Net::FTP module under macperl?

Not yet, but I will soon.  It another one of those God damned (this
word brought to you by the Communications Decency Act of 1996) Unix
centric Perl modules in CPAN.  (Matthias, is there any reason that
getpwuid() (and the other routines that try to identify who you are)
shouldn't just return something, say 666, instead of squawk and die?)
You need to excise the bit where it tries to track down your .netrc (I
don't even have one on my Suns any more), and change \n to \012 and \r
to \015 when reading/writing to the socket.  Hacking Net::FTP is on my
to do list, and I may get  to it this weekend.

Until then, you might try:

<ftp://mors.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/MacPerl/Scripts/lib/ftplib.pl>
<ftp://mors.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/MacPerl/Scripts/lib/ftplib.doc>

which is Perl 4, but works under Perl 5.

} 2. Is there a anything more to installing modules in macperl other than 
} ensuring they are in the proper place in the lib directory?  (other than system 
} dependant functions)  In order to "use Net::FTP;" (but I never did use it ;-) I 
} had to make several changes such as removing a "use strict;" (to disable 
} barewords warnings) and remove the version after some other "use [xx] 
} [version];" statements.  Even when it successfully "used", when I called some 
} of its functions, various internal variables of the module seemed to be out of 
} scope within the module.  This leads me to think that I did something bad to 
} the module when installing it.  At this point I had to go back to do some real 
} work, and gave up on this module.
} 3. Is there something wrong with macperl in executing large scripts?  I 
} attempted to use makemaker to do what I understand to be a "proper" 
} installation of Net::FTP, but even after resaving following the "this script is 
} to large to be edited by macperl" message, the makemaker script did
not run.

MakeMaker is pointless unless you have a reasonably good imitation of
make, which I'd guess even most MacPerl users don't have (I don't) ,
let alone most Mac users.  I *really* wish the module users would
realize this, that we all *do* have one program, Perl, and that they
should write their standard installer entirely in Perl.

} 
} Tim Andvaag (andvaagts@stentor.ca)
} 
} # my extra ftp commands for macftp.pl
} #######################################################
} #  Send acct
} sub acct { ## Public
}     &do_ftp_cmd(200, "acct", @_); 
} }
} #######################################################
} #  Send user
} sub user { ## Public
}     &do_ftp_cmd(331, "user", @_); 
} }
} #######################################################
} #  Send pass
} sub pass { ## Public
}     &do_ftp_cmd(200, "pass", @_); 
} }
} 
---
--------
Paul J. Schinder
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
Code 693, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
schinder@pjstoaster.pg.md.us