ftp-advanced: Directory listing

ftp-advanced.md

@@ -2,7 +2,26 @@
 
 ## Directory listing
 
-TBD
+You can list a remote FTP directory with curl by making sure the URL ends with
+a trailing slash. If the URL ends with a slash, curl presumes that is a
+directory you want to list. If it actually isn't a directory, you will most
+likely instead get an error returned.
+
+    curl ftp://ftp.example.com/directory/
+
+With FTP there is no standard syntax for the directory output that is returned
+for this sort of command that uses the standard FTP command `LIST`. The
+listing is usually humanly readable and perfectly understandable but you will
+see that different servers will return the listing in slightly different ways.
+
+One to get just a listing of all the names in a directory and thus to avoid
+the special formatting of the regular directory listings, is to tell curl to
+`--list-only` (or just `-l`). curl then issues the `NLST` FTP command instead:
+
+    curl --list-only ftp://ftp.example.com/directory/
+
+NLST has its own quirks though, as some FTP servers list only actual *files*
+in their response to NLST; they do not include directories and symbolic links!
 
 ## Uploading