CURLOPT_TRANSFERTEXT(3) Introduction to Library Functions CURLOPT_TRANSFERTEXT(3)

CURLOPT_TRANSFERTEXT - request a text based transfer for FTP

#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_TRANSFERTEXT, long text);

A parameter set to 1 tells the library to use ASCII mode for FTP transfers, instead of the default binary transfer. For Win32 systems it does not set the stdout to binary mode. This option can be usable when transferring text data between systems with different views on certain characters, such as newlines or similar.

libcurl does not do a complete ASCII conversion when doing ASCII transfers over FTP. This is a known limitation/flaw that nobody has rectified. libcurl simply sets the mode to ASCII and performs a standard transfer.

0, disabled

This functionality affects all supported protocols

int main(void)
{


  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();


  if(curl) {


    CURLcode res;


    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "ftp://example.com/textfile");


    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_TRANSFERTEXT, 1L);


    res = curl_easy_perform(curl);


    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);


  }
}

Added in curl 7.1.1

curl_easy_setopt(3) returns a CURLcode indicating success or error.

CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error occurred, see libcurl-errors(3).

CURLOPT_CRLF(3)

2025-05-02 libcurl