CURL command line tool - Delete File from FTP server

Question

I'm actually trying to use CURL to make some operations on a ftp server in C++ with Visual Studio. I've no trouble to do some uploads or downloads with commande line tools.

But for deleting some file I have some errors.

Here is the command I type:

curl -v -u username:pwd ftp://host/FileTodelete.xml -Q '-DELE FileTodelete.xml'

This is the answer:

* Adding handle: conn: 0x1ca5260
* Adding handle: send: 0
* Adding handle: recv: 0
* Curl_addHandleToPipeline: length: 1
* - Conn 0 (0x1ca5260) send_pipe: 1, recv_pipe: 0
* About to connect() to host port 21 (
*   Trying ......
* Connected to host (...) po
< 220-FileZilla Server version 0.9.49 beta
< 220 Bienvenue sur le serveur FTP de HandTrainer
> USER username
< 331 Password required for username
> PASS pwd
< 230 Logged on
> PWD
< 257 "/" is current directory.
* Entry path is '/'
> '-DELE
* ftp_perform ends with SECONDARY: 0
< 500 Syntax error, command unrecognized.
* QUOT command failed with 500
* Closing connection 0
curl: (21) QUOT command failed with 500
* Rebuilt URL to: FileTodelete.xml'/
* Adding handle: conn: 0x1ca5260
* Adding handle: send: 0
* Adding handle: recv: 0
* Curl_addHandleToPipeline: length: 1
* - Conn 1 (0x1ca5260) send_pipe: 1, recv_pipe: 0
* Could not resolve host: FileTodelete.xml'
* Closing connection 1
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: FileTodelete.xml'

Moreover, the file is on the server so I don't understand.

Answer 1

Problem solved! The dash before DELE should not be there:

curl -v -u username:pwd ftp://host/FileTodelete.xml -Q "DELE FileTodelete.xml"

Answer 2

You place a command with -Q, but -DELE file is not a common ftp command. Try one of these instead:

curl -v -u username:pwd ftp://host/FileTodelete.xml -Q 'DELE FileTodelete.xml'
curl -v -u username:pwd ftp://host/FileTodelete.xml -Q 'DELETE FileTodelete.xml'
curl -v -u username:pwd ftp://host/FileTodelete.xml -Q 'rm FileTodelete.xml'

Answer 3

I accomplished this task by first logging into my FTP server then typing "?" at the command line to get a list of commands recognized by my FTP server. The command recognized by my server was "delete".

So, -Q"delete $fileToRemove" $serverURL

I was also able to get it to work by using -X"DELE $fileToRemove" $serverURL. However, I kept getting rc=19 (because I think the "-X" option mostly applies to HTTP|HTTPS?) from curl when I used this argument even though the file was successfully deleted.

Not sure if other FTP servers recognize different commands but this is what worked for me.