Proper FTP transfer mode

I've always treated my mysql backups (created by mysqldump) as text files, and transferred them by FTP in ASCII mode. But recently it ocurred to me that the database can contain binary data, so they should really be treated as binary data and transferred by FTP in binary mode, right? The binary data could be corrupted by transferring in ASCII mode, correct?

I did a search on Google to see what I could find out about this, and mostly what I saw were hosting companies' FAQs instructing their users to transfer mysql backups in ASCII mode.

If there is any issue of getting the proper line terminators for a given OS, it would be better to still transfer the file in binary mode and then use a conversion utility (even an editor like Textpad), wouldn't it?

In reality what I am probably going to do in general is gzip the backup before transferring by FTP in which case it will be transferred in binary mode anyway.

right. correct. it would.

did that help

lol since u were ignored anyway, now i can understand why.

Well . . . no one can fault me for doing something that increased your understanding, since you're obviously in such desperate need of it.