auto ftping

can someone give me a bash-script example of auto ftping a file from a site.
let's say 'foo.bar.com' is the site, 'passwd' is the password, and the file is 'somefile.gz'


[edit:]

"Give me a script and I can do it once, teach me to script and I can do it forever."

it's easy to call the ftp program
`ftp foo.bar.com`
But, once connected, how do I pass values to the ftp program such as username and password. Since this script is going to be running itself, by process of cron, I cannot make it so that I have to be there to enter those commands at the ftp prompt. Can this be done?

[/edit]

thanks

look at ncftpput, part of ncftp, a very, very good FTP client.

or consider that ftp is not what you want! there's a package for remote, secure synchronization of directories called rdiff-backup:

http://rdiff-backup.stanford.edu/

this may be a better solution for you than ftp.

And if you, after all this (good!) advice, still want to use ftp and a script, here are the basics:

Or, my favorite, rsync over ssh on hosts that have exchanged public keys. . .

> And if you, after all this (good!) advice, still want to use ftp and a script, here are the basics

Is it good advice because ftping this way (the way that I want) is bad?

what does this does: <<-here , as in
ftp -n -i <<-here

The other advice is good because they are mostly concerned with security (and ncftp is a very good ftpclient).

I could start a discussion about security and its importants, but I won't. Bottom line is: Try to set up your box as secure as possible.

Ok question number 2, the '<<-here' thingie:

These are called 'here-documents'. They are meant to be used within shell scripts (although it will work from the command line, but is kinda useless). They let you specify 'batch' input to a program.

It works like this:

program <<-label
commands that program understands
label

After program is started, everything between <<-label and label is given to program

Ok, let's take the ftp script and explain a 'real' example:

ftp -n -i <<-here #Start ftp, with -i, -n and give lines between <<-here and here to the ftp program

open foo.bar.com # Connect to (open) site
user <user> <passwd> # Give user and password
bin # Set transfer type
get somefile.gz # Download the file
bye # Close ftp connection

here # we are done

awesome! This is exaclty was I was looking for. Thanks alot.