Using Wildcards

Robo-FTP uses a strict wildcard matching scheme for the * and ? characters.

* will match with zero or more characters, including periods.

? will match one character exactly, whether it is an alpha, numeric, or special character (underscores, periods, and so on).

For example:

"Report*.xls" will match with:

Report.xls

Report20060822.xls

Report.sales.q3.47.xls

"Order_????.doc" will match with:

Order_0721.doc

Order_ann1.doc

Order_ja.3.doc

But will not match with "Order_34.doc".

Note that FTP site commands, such as FTPGETFILE, do not use these wildcard schemes; they are dependant on the server's wild card rules.

Some users are familiar with using "*.*" to represent every file in the directory.  However, with Robo-FTP, you should use "*" to get every file; "*.*" will only retrieve those files with periods in the name.  The "*.*" convention is a hold over from the days of DOS, when every file name consisted of a 1-8 character name, followed by a dot, and then followed by a 0-3 character extension.