I'm not too sure about "generic" FTP clients... but I found that the ncftp package, especially using ncftpget, will support this pretty much automagically. I use the ncftpput to maintain a website of my writings, so that works nicely to not do a push on files already present that have the right time stamps.
-- John R. Campbell Speaker to Machines souperb at gmail dot com Why OS X? Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
