glenn@LL-XN.ARPA (Glenn Adams) (06/25/86)
In reviewing the current FTP specification (RFC959) I uncovered what seems to be a discrepancy. In the examples in Appendix II, on page 63, a response code of 200 is shown as the response to a CWD command. However, under the list of Command-Reply Sequences on page 50, CWD is shown to only accept a 250 response code. Since I interpret a CWD command as being excluded from the File System functional category, I assume that the response code of 200 is correct. Especially since CDUP as a special case of CWD does use 200. My motivation for reviewing the spec was a failure that occurred between a Symbolics LISPM Rel 6.1 FTP Client and a UNIX 4.3BSD FTP Server. The UNIX server gives a positive response code of 200 for the DELE command among others. The Symbolics FTP server accepts only a 250 positive response code. On the other hand, the UNIX FTP client ignores the response code completely. I suspect that the UNIX implementation is incorrect in not responding with the proper code; whereas, the Symbolics implementation is too conservative in the response codes accepted. --Glenn Adams