Could someone help with with a FTP question?

Question

When you upload files to a site (WS_FTP) there is an option for ASCII or BINARY. Which option should I choose. I remember somone saying that if you transfer some type using the incorrect one it could corrupt it?

Any thoughts?
thanks

Answer 1

ASCII mode uses a translation table to convert "special" characters to be compatible with the native OS that the file is being transferred on to. The most observed change is the line terminators between DOS and UNIX based systems. So when you perform an ASCII transfer the file content are altered for "compatibility" with the native OS, which isn't always desirable.

BINARY transfers transfer the file exactly as it exists in the originating system and is required for files that are executable or written with special program specific formatting.

Generally you can always transfer a file in BINARY and be sure that the file received is an exact copy of the source. BINARY tends to be a little slower than ASCII but not significantly.


To be safe you can always transfer a file in BINARY

Answer 2

Just search on google for Flash FXP and use it to transfer your files to FTP server cause she have a Automatic Transfer mode and is switching between those 2 methods by detecting the extension of files.

Answer 3

The general rule of thumb is if you can view the file in a text editor like notepad (ie. .html, .js, .css files etc) you should upload in ASCII mode, most others (including images, sound files, video, zip files, executable's etc) should be uploaded in Binary.

Answer 4

you can Binary all the time.

ASCII is for pure text only. These kind of files are difficult to find these days :)

Answer 5

Use smart ftp I don't get that question and it works fine