When you wish to test your assembly code and revisions, you can rapidly upload your source file(s) to the target Itanium system using an ftp client application. Then you can proceed with issuing appropriate host commands in the window of the telnet client application. We suggest several ftp applications in Appendix B. Like telnet, traditional ftp transmits the plain-text version of your password through the network. Therefore the manager of the Itanium system or your network may encourage, or even require, that you use a more secure connection method. If you have never used ftp before, it will be helpful for you to know that your client ftp application construes its get and put commands from the vantage point of your local computer. Thus you will normally be using put to move a source file from your local computer to the remote Itanium system. If you are using a Windows system, which may hide file extensions, make sure that source files have the appropriate extension on the remote system (e.g., a name ending with .s for assembly language source files). The major potential problem in uploading files is the transfer mode. Both your client ftp application and the ftp receiver at the other system should be set to agree upon moving the source file in ASCII (text) mode. If this is set up correctly, the file will have appropriate line terminators on the other system. This is important, since various computer systems use different native means of marking in a file where one line of text stops and the following line starts, as demonstrated in Table A-1.
If you mistakenly attempt to move a text file in binary mode, then the remote system may interpret the file incorrectly as double-spaced or as one extended line that could overrun buffer storage. Alternatively, some text editing programs, like BBEdit, can produce text files with the appropriate line terminators for any target system. Such files can and should be moved in binary mode. |