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Note, that there is a similar (though, simpler) protocol called SCP. IN In terms of its performance it has no difference from SFTP as they're both based on SSH.

Usage examples

Here is an a basic example of an interactive session (a password for SLAC UNIX user 'user' at SLAC is being requested):

% sftp user@slac.stanford.edu:/usr/work/user/MyDataFile.dat ./
Connecting to yakut10.slac.stanford.edu...
user@yakut10.slac.stanford.edu's password:
Fetching /usr/work/user/MyDataFile.dat to ./MyDataFile.dat
...

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