What's the difference between ASCII and BINARY file modes?

In brief,html ortext based files are supposed to be transferred inASCII mode.

Uploading them inBinary mode will append^M's to the end of every line. In most

cases this is OK with html files, because your browser will ignore them. BUT, with other

text files such ascgi scripts, uploading them in binary will damage them, thus causing

a 'server 500 error'. This is because binary mode has added^M's to the end of every

line, which are not supposed to be in the program. This of course, is what causes the

additional message of 'Malformed Headers', which often displays at the bottom of the

"Server 500" message when acgi script has crashed.

BINARY mode is used for transferring executable programs, compressed files and all

image/picture files. If you try to upload an image inASCII mode, you observer a strange

mess appearing on the page where the image is suppose to appear.ASCII mode in this

case, has corrupted the binary coding in thejpeg orgif image. If this happens, just

re-upload it in theBinary format.