FTP transfer

[bigg_MARK]

Not sure if this is a good place to post this but....

We have a client that sends us orders/shipping/billing info via a dial up connection, the dial up connection is going away and we need to get the info via FTP, No problem I have a program that I can automate to grab the files and put them back up after the transfer / processing is finished. The problem I have is this.
once the files have been put back up onto the FTP site (finished/processed files) i need to change all the file name so they end in ".snd". That way their system doesn't start processing them before the transfer is complete. Thats all good and well but my little automated FTP app doesn't allow for advanced FTP commands.

The client has a script already in place that they use for the files we are pulling down (after their system completes the transfer of the files to the FTP directory I'm supposed to pull from it ads the ".snd" extention to the files) I asked if they could just aply their script to the Incoming folder on the FTP site since they already have one that works AND they are the one's changing the workflow. They said they have no way of knowing if the transfer is complet eso I asked my contact how their script is able to "know" when their file transfer is complete and he said he didn't know but they can't help us. Friggin usless.... we bill over 40k a month on this account so I bent over and said "drill me dry baby I love it" (not really) o.k. well I said "no problem we can get this done. So I've got my Dad (old school Unix programmer) coming in to write a script to do this for me next week.

My question is do any of you guys/gals have to deal with this kind of thing, if so what was your solution, I have a Windows box and an Ubuntu linux box I can use to run various GUI ftp apps, does anybdoy know of an easy to use one that will do what I need?

Thanks!

[TimS]

Your dad and the linux box will save you. Most of the internet runs on Linux, so ftp stuff is part of the operating system. Your dad may want to develop a workflow something like this, assuming your client's uploaded file gets saved to a certain folder. He can create a hot folder by setting up a cron job that looks in a certain directory every 5 minutes, checks the files are not open (helps you check that upload is complete), then renames *.* to *.notsnd (or whatever you want). Then ftp is as simple as ftp *.notsnd 22.108.168.2 or wherever you want to send it. (syntax here is not correct but you get the idea). Hopefully your dad is enough of a cunning old dog to milk your company for a couple of days work for a few lines of code.

[bigg_MARK]

Yup I figured as much.

I can do basic command line stuff but I've forgotten 95.6% of what I learned.
Heh, oh well, lunch is on the old man!