Re: FTP functions

[Xavier Delacour]

list changed from help-octave.

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 7:07 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
>  Octave already depends on libcurl, so if that provides the needed
>  functionality, I think it might be best to simply use libcurl to
>  implement the ftp functions.  As there are only a few functions, I
>  don't see that it is necessary to use SWIG for this.  To make it most
>  useful to people writing C++ code and using the Octave scripting
>  language, it might be best to provide a C++ wrapper to libcurl that
>  makes it work nicely with liboctave, and then to write just what is
>  necessary in C++ to provide the necessary functionality at the
>  scripting langauge level, then write the rest of the functions in .m
>  files.

Other than being a lot more work, I don't see how this solution is
really any different from what is in octave-forge. The package as is
provides the full interface, and is given in about 250 lines (most of
which passes through to ftplib. ie, just renames the functions to the
Matlab interface). ftplib itself is only a single .c file and 1000
lines of  code, and pretty straight forward to my eye. The package
also includes a few test cases.

Though you may be right that having a libcurl/liboctave wrapper might
be useful for other things, especially non-FTP protocols. And
incurring a needless dependency is not desirable, of course.

Xavier