Easily Parsed LIST Format (EPLF)
David H. Bernstein · 1998
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) supports two commands that list files: NLST and LIST. The NLST response is easy to parse but provides very little information. The LIST response provides more information, but in a format that varies from system to system. The most common LIST formats are undocumented and impossible to parse reliably. This document defines Easily Parsed LIST Format (EPLF), a format for the LIST response that is usable by humans yet easy for programs to handle. This format is supported by anonftpd, a secure FTP server. One visible advantage of EPLF is that a browser can easily display dates in the viewer's time zone and native language. EPLF also makes it straightforward for an indexing program to automatically traverse an FTP area and for a mirroring program to avoid downloading the same file twice. Easily Parsed LIST Format (EPLF) D. J. Bernstein, [email protected] 19970201