Hello all,

Several years ago, I inhereted part of the funet ftp archive.  The
archive was setup where each directory contained exactly one 00INDEX
file containing the raw file names, and a short description of each
file.  Later, a perl script was written that generates index.html
files from them... all before me, however.

My question is: what purpose did/do 00INDEX files serve?  Is there any
reason (and I do mean ANY reason-- good or bad) I shouldn't ditch them
and just maintain the index.html files directly?

I'm convinced that whatever answer is behind this is tied to unix
antiquity, which is why I ask here.  Thanks for any response unix
gurus...

- Bo

zim <bo@zimmers.net> wrote:
> Hello all,
>=20
> Several years ago, I inhereted part of the funet ftp archive.  The
> archive was setup where each directory contained exactly one 00INDEX
> file containing the raw file names, and a short description of each
> file.  Later, a perl script was written that generates index.html
> files from them... all before me, however.
>=20
> My question is: what purpose did/do 00INDEX files serve?  Is there any
> reason (and I do mean ANY reason-- good or bad) I shouldn't ditch them
> and just maintain the index.html files directly?
>=20
> I'm convinced that whatever answer is behind this is tied to unix
> antiquity, which is why I ask here.  Thanks for any response unix
> gurus...
>=20
Doing a Web search, I found this page that may help you:
<http://blogs.iis.net/robert_mcmurray/archive/2009/09/05/creating-recursive=
-directory-listing-files-for-ftp-clients.aspx>

So, it looks like 00INDEX and ls-lr.txt files are designed to be read by hu=
man and contain the ftp server index, with file names and descriptions, in =
order to inform the user of the server contents which is useful when file n=
ames are short and not self-descriptive as was usual in the good old days o=
f UNIX V7 which had 14 chars max file name lengths.
ls-lr.txt is there to avoid the overhead of a full recursive ls.

In other words, index.html seems to serve the same purpose than 00INDEX, an=
d generating index.html from 00INDEX looks fine to me.
The ls-lr.txt HTTP+HTML equivalent would be a "site map" page.

The name 00INDEX, obviously, is designed to be top in directory listings.

That's all I was able to grab about the story of 00INDEX... Maybe some old =
ftp servers or clients treated it in a special way. I don't know.

There seems to be software that automatically generates these files in some=
 cases:
<http://www.vadvbbs.com/bugs/view.php?id=3D24>

--=20
Andr=C3=A9 Gillibert