newbie : ftp auto-uncompress?

[Alex Martelli]

"Sandipan Gangopadhyay" <sandipan at vsnl.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.990242127.14273.python-list at python.org...
> AFAIK, the server did it. Your ftp object received uncompressed text.
    ...
> > actually 'fileName.Z'.  The file saved in my local directory is
> uncompressed
> > to text, as I want.  What function did the Unix 'uncompress',
File.write?
> > Is it due to my choice of 'fileName' and not 'fileName.Z' in the 2
lines?
> >
> > I searched the Python documentation with no luck.  Any pointers/links to
> > documentation about this much appreciated.

Yep -- it's the server.  Very popular extensions to the FTP protocol
(on-the-fly compression, decompression, archiving, ...) have the
FTP server interpret the requested filename and "do what you mean".

http://www.webcom.com/help/ftp/compression.shtml has a good
and simple guide to these features as provided by wu-ftp, for ex.

Python has little to do with it...!-)


Alex