Smart FTP Line Endings – Finally working in version 4.0!

I will let you in on a little known problem that sometimes causes files to do weird things when switched between Unix/Linux and Windows computers: Line endings are not your friend!

You see, at the end of every line of code, there is something called a line ending. Linux machines (which are widely popular for money and other reasons) use LF

….

Most FTP clients will, by default, work in ascii mode. In ascii mode, as files are transferred between the different kinds of machines, the line endings are cleaned up to match what will be expected on the receiving machine. This may mess up some exe and other files, so the makers of Smart FTP suggest you avoid it. For someone like me, who spends a tremendous amount of time in both Windows world and Linux land, avoidance just doesn’t make sense. So I am left with 3 options:

1. Set my code editor to use Linux style line endings, which will cause everything to be recognized as one long line of text by Windows.

2. Choose a different FTP client. (Which I would probably do if I wasn’t so lazy – there are plenty of wonderful free clients available! I just prefer the setup of Smart FTP)

3. Figure out how on Earth I’m supposed to get Smart FTP to really and truly understand my goals!

I will finish this post later. For now, here are the notes on how I found the right place to do it:

Tools > Settings > Favorites

Click the Edit button in Favorites and add some Wildcards.

Suggested wildcards:

*.htm   *.html   *.xhtml   *.php   *.xml   *.css   *.txt