My FTP client autodetects ASCII and BINARY files. Should I use that?
The “autodetect” feature of most graphical FTP clients works by learning what file extensions (.html, for example) indicate text files, and which indicate binary files. Unless you’ve entered all extensions you use, this method is imperfect. In particular, if you plan on using autodetect make sure that .pl and .cgi files are recognized as text files. Text files that are uploaded in BINARY format, particularly cgi scripts and mail configuration files, may exhibit strange behavior or simply not work at all. I uploaded a text file as BINARY and now it doesn’t work right! If possible, your best bet is to simply upload the file again in ASCII format, overwriting the previous copy. I’m getting ‘Blocking Call Cancelled’ or some other error! Generally speaking, FTP errors are reported in vague terms. “Blocking Call Cancelled,” for instance, is a message report by Windows 9X/NT clients that can mean most anything, although it often indicates the presence of a firewall on the client side. As a fi
