  FTP, passwords, and .netrc? 
 The Question is:
 
A client that I am working for has some command procedures that FTP files
to/from remote servers.  Right now they have the user id/password hard-coded
into their FTP statements.  What I would like to do is separate
out the id/password from the ftp logic.  I am new to Open VMS, but in UNIX
you can set up a file called .netrc and define the id/password there.  Does
anything like this exist in Open VMS?  We are using Open VMS version 6.2.
 
 
 The Answer is:
 
  There is no direct analog of the UNIX .netrc file on OpenVMS.
 
  The OpenVMS TCP/IP Services package provides proxies for incoming
  connections, and (depending on what you are up to) the support for
  UCX$FTP_ANONYMOUS_ALIAS might also be of interest.  (On TCP/IP
  Services V5.0 and later, use TCPIP$FTP_ANONYMOUS_ALIAS.)
 
  With OpenVMS V6.2 and later and a compliant TCP/IP package, you can
  use the COPY/FTP, DIRECTORY/FTP and similar commands, and perform a
  symbol substitution (based on the contents of a symbol or logical
  name) as part of the FTP operation.  For example:
 
    $ targetsym = "node""user password"""
    $ directory/ftp 'targetsym'::
 
    $ define targetlnm "node""user password"""
    $ directory/ftp 'f$trnlnm("targetlnm")'::
 
  If you have a third-party TCP/IP package installed, please check the
  documentation provided by the vendor.
 
