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FTPFS refers to file systems that support access to aFile Transfer Protocol (FTP) server through standard file systemapplication programming interfaces (APIs).
The ftpfs command inPlan 9 was originated byDennis Ritchie and was included in the first release of the system (1992). It arranged for a remote file system reachable via FTP to appear as part of the local file system.
InLinux systems, FTPFS was initially implemented as aLinux kernel module that allows the user to mount aFTP server onto the local filesystem, but it was never seen as the perfect way to do it. By 2003, it has been converted to use LUFS, and later toFUSE. Now it is calledCurlFtpFS because it uses the universallibcurl for FTP transactions, and is becoming part of the majorLinux distributions. There also exists LftpFS for smart mirroring of FTP sites.
InmacOS, a read-only FTP file system is included that can be used either via the GUI (with⌘ Command+K) or the command line (mount_ftp). The read-only limitation is noted in the man page for mount_ftp (on a macOS system, in Terminal.app, see "man mount_ftp"). However, the free application Macfusion includes a working implementation of FTPFS. Additionally, macOS Fuse is reported to enable this but the method to do so is undocumented (as of March 4, 2013) either via various obvious man page (e.g. sshfs) or in the macOS Fuse wiki.
ForWindows XP,Windows 7 and otherWindows operating systems, this functionality is partially provided by the "Network Places"/"Network Location" shell facility; a network place is a link to either an FTP server or aWebDAV server and can be accessed inWindows Explorer as just another network filesystem.[1] This does not provide transparent access through the lowest-levelWin32 file system APIs, however. Such functionality can be provided by third party programs such asWebDrive andFTPDrive.
