There have been several requests for a "delete-remote" option to delete
files on a remote FTP server after they have been retrieved. David
Dorsey submitted a patch with these changes to the wget-patches list
back in September of 2005, and there is no record of a response or any
discussion of the patch.
This feature would be extremely useful since wget can act as a
command-line FTP client, and there are cases where it is desirable or
necessary to remove files from an FTP server after they have been
retrieved. This makes it possible to clean up files automatically when
they are retrieved, saving disk space and work for the FTP server
administrator.
I applied David's patch to the latest source branch and it compiles and
tests successfully. There is one minor change needed regarding the
location of the Help text for the new option - it should probably be in
"FTP options" instead of "Recursive download", but the rest of the patch
appears to work as designed.
Can we please get David's patch reviewed and applied to the source tree
if it is accepted? It would be really nice to have this option in the
official distribution so we don't have to maintain private copies of wget.
Thanks
Bob Haddleton
Alcatel-Lucent
