Traditional UNIX FTP servers allow the ls, dir .... commands to name several files. For example, the command
dir *.ps *.ps.gz
refers to every file in the current directory whose name ends with .ps or .ps.gz.
The server returns information about each regular file and the contents of each directory, in a format even more difficult to parse than the usual /bin/ls format.
Traditional UNIX FTP servers also allow the ls command to specify options for the (UNIX) /bin/ls program. For example, the parameter ls -t *.java produces a list of .java files, sorted in decreasing order of modification time.
The wild cards can also be used for multiple file downloading and uploading (which we now go on to discuss).