[J65nko]

The native ftp programs of FreeBSD and OpenBSD have a feature called auto-fetching. Using this to get a single file is doable. You type something like this

ftp ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/base35.tgz

and it will log you in as an anonymous user, change to the directory and get the the file for you. For multiple files it quickly becomes a lot of typing

ftp  ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/MD5 \
     ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/base35.tgz \
     ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/bsd \
     ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/etc35.tgz \
     ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/floppy35.fs

You can do that in a script, but it still a lot of work, to change the ftp site for example. The following script should make that easier.

In its current state. the script has been configured to download by ftp an OpenBSD snapshot. After reading the script, you will see that it is simple to adapt to your needs or wishes.
Some tips

• The shell continuation character "\" only works as advertised, if it is the last character on the line. You can use "cat --e" to check for that. The "-e" option will show the "$" as (Do you see the error here?)

  xwin="xbase35.tgz \$
        xfont35.tgz \ $
        xserv35.tgz \$
        xshare35.tgz"$

• Run the script with "sh -nv" to check for syntax errors
• Use "sh -xv" to see the expansion of the variables

"

#!/bin/sh
# --- FTP auto-fetch script
# --- get OpenBSD snapshot

server=ftp.openbsd.org
server=openbsd.bay13.net

dir=pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386

# --- customizeable file sets

base="MD5 \
        base35.tgz \
        bsd \
        bsd.rd \
        comp35.tgz \
        etc35.tgz \
        floppy35.fs \
        man35.tgz \
        misc35.tgz "

xwin="xbase35.tgz \
      xetc35.tgz \
      xfont35.tgz \
      xserv35.tgz \
      xshare35.tgz"

misc="INSTALL.i386 \
      INSTALL.linux \
      index.txt"

# --- main function

get() {
    ftplist=""  # Set to null in case for second invocation
    for item in $@ ; do
        full_name=ftp://$server/$dir/$item
        ftplist="$ftplist $full_name"
    done

    echo "About to get the following:"
    echo "$ftplist"

    ftp $ftplist
}

# --- main script

get $base
#get $xwin
#get $misc

For FreeBSD replacing ftp by the fetch program could be an alternative.

And yes, I know there are more feature rich alternatives like curl and wget.
The advantage of this script is that is will run on a basic FreeBSD or OpenBSD install. So you could use it to download the curl or wget package