New submission from Rafe H. Kettler <rafe.kett...@gmail.com>:

I think that the documentation for ftplib is a bit too concise and assumes that 
the reader in an expert in the protocol when the point of the module is to 
abstract out such details.

For example, for the error documentation, the exceptions are only explained by 
the error code the server can return to trigger them. So, while the explanation 
of error_perm, for example, should say something about permissions, it just 
says "raised when an error code in the range 500–599 is received." This is 
particularly unclear for those with no knowledge of the internals of the 
protocol.

Also, in the documentation for RetrLines(), the documentation mentions the 
options LIST, NLST, and MLSD without explaining what they are. I know that when 
I first started using ftplib I had to experiment with each option to determine 
what they do, and I think it would be better if this was clear in the docs from 
the start.

This can become particularly unclear for less FTP-savvy users.

I can propose a patch to the documentation if needed.

----------
assignee: d...@python
components: Documentation
messages: 118423
nosy: Rafe.H..Kettler, d...@python, orsenthil
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: ftplib documentation is unclear
type: feature request
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.1, Python 3.2

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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue10072>
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