URL Syntax

In Epsilon, URLs must start with ftp://, http://, https://, scp://, ssh://, or telnet://. (If you omit the service name, the ftp: part, Epsilon for Windows will pass the file name to Windows as a UNC-style network file name.)

For some services, you can specify a user name, password, or port number using the URL syntax of service://username:password@hostname:portnumber/filepath. (Ftp and http recognize all three, telnet recognizes only a port number, and scp recognizes only a user name.)

If you include a user name in an ftp or http URL but omit the :password part, Epsilon will prompt for one (and will make sure the password does not appear in your state file, session file, or similar places). But if you include a password in your URL, note that it may be saved in Epsilon's session file or similar places.

If you omit the username:password@ or username@ part entirely in an ftp URL, Epsilon uses the user name "anonymous" and the password specified by the anon-ftp-password variable (default: EpsilonUser@unknown.host). You can set this to your email address if you prefer.

You can also use Emacs-style syntax for specifying remote file names: /username@hostname:filepath. Epsilon will behave as if you had typed the corresponding URL.

In ftp:// URLs, Epsilon treats a file name following the / as a relative pathname. That is, ftp://user@example.com/myfile refers to a file named myfile in the user's home directory. Put two slashes, as in ftp://user@example.com//myfile, to refer to /myfile in the root directory. You can type \ instead of / in any URL and Epsilon will substitute /.

If you type the name of a local directory to the find-file command, find-file will run the dired command on it. With ftp:// URLs, find-file won't always know that what you typed is a remote directory name (as opposed to a file name) and might try to retrieve the URL as a file, leading to an error message like "Not a plain file". End your URL with a / to indicate a directory name.

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