What would be the fastest way to recursively retrieve entire directory listing from an ftp server using wget/curl/whatever? I don't need to download any files, just directory and file names. Basically what ls -R
does.
2 Answers
The best I can do with wget is
wget -r --spider --no-remove-listing ftp://ftp.example.com/
Which will create empty directories containing a .listing
file with the listing of the matching directory on the ftp server, and take forever.
You'll probably need to use a real ftp client like lftp:
lftp -e "find;quit" ftp://ftp.example.com/ > listing.txt