urllib.urlretrieve() with ftp error

[vimboss]

BPO	635453
Nosy	@brettcannon

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/brettcannon'
closed_at = <Date 2004-07-13.00:54:03.000>
created_at = <Date 2002-11-08.11:39:27.000>
labels = ['library']
title = 'urllib.urlretrieve() with ftp error '
updated_at = <Date 2004-07-13.00:54:03.000>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/vimboss'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2004-07-13.00:54:03.000>
actor = 'brett.cannon'
assignee = 'brett.cannon'
closed = True
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2002-11-08.11:39:27.000>
creator = 'vimboss'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 635453
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['13142', '13143', '13144']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['brett.cannon', 'jpe', 'vimboss']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'wont fix'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue635453'
versions = ['Python 2.2']

[vimboss]

When using urllib.urlretrieve() to obtain a file
through ftp and the file is not readable the directory
listing of the file is returned. The expected behavior
is that a "permission denied" error is generated.
The current behavior makes it impossible to detect
downloading a file failed.

To reproduce:

from urllib import urlretrieve
fname = "/pub/vim/unstable/testfile"
url = "ftp://ftp.vim.org"
resfile, h = urlretrieve(url + fname)
print "file contents: '%s'" % open(resfile).read()
print "header stuff: ", h

The result:
file contents: '-rw------- 1 506 450
25 Nov 8 11:50 testfile
'

Using ftplib.FTP() does result in the expected error:

from ftplib import FTP
def list(s):
	print s
f = FTP("ftp.vim.org")
f.login()
f.retrbinary("RETR " + fname, list)
f.quit()

The last line of the resulting exception:
ftplib.error_perm: 550 /pub/vim/unstable/testfile:
Permission denied.

[jpe]

Logged In: YES
user_id=22785

This is evidently the intended behavior when a url for an
unreadable file is opened, but I think it would make more
sense to raise an exception. To change the behavior so it
raises an exception, simply remove the test for an exception
reason starting with 550 from ftpwrapper.retrfile() in
urllib.py.

[brettcannon]

Logged In: YES
user_id=357491

So this was discussed on python-dev (see the thread at http://
mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-July/046035.html ) and the
conclusion was to not change the behavior. Since that handling is the
only way for directory listings to work when people leave off a trailing
slash it was deemed not as nice as the current situation.

A note has been added to the "Restrictions" part of the urllib docs to
state this behavior.