where can i read about ...

... using ftp programmatically.

i would like to try my hand at writing an ftp client.

thanks much!

craigk
[email protected]

The obvious answer is to check the RFCs, but they can be extremely difficult to understand. Nevertheless, they are the authoritative documents. Here's the link I use for the RFC index:

http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc-front.html

The latest RFC for FTP is 0959 with security extensions in RFC 2228

Hopefully someone can give you a source for something a little more readable, but this should provide you with the information you need to follow the authoritative standard.