Using grep and ls in FTP client?

Question

How could I use grep and ls in FTP client...

I mean if I want to find some specific file I could use:

 ls -l | grep pattern

Answer 1

lftp can, exactly the way you typed.

Answer 2

With the usual Unix commandline interactive ftp, one approach is:

Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> dir . foobar
output to local-file: foobar [anpqy?]? y
500 Unknown command
227 Entering Passive Mode (62,149,140,15,195,159)
150 Accepted data connection
 11966       5.26 KB/s 
226-Options: -a -l 
226 156 matches total
ftp> !grep con foobar
-rwxr-xr-x    1 11050207   users          911007 Sep 13  2007 accu_pyconc.pdf
-rwxr-xr-x    1 11050207   users         9805405 Mar 25  2009 pycon_abst.pdf

i.e., get the dir results into a local file first, then run grep locally. Incidentally, this lets you run multiple greps after paying for just one dir data transfer;-).

Answer 3

On Windows, you can do this with WinSCP scripting for any protocol, including the FTP:

winscp.com /command ^
    "open ftp://username:password@example.com" ^
    "ls /path/*.txt" ^
    "exit"

References:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/scripting
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/scriptcommand_ls