I need to download 10,000 zip files from a client's FTP that has about 40,000 items on it. I have contemplated doing:

```
$ cat > files.txt
file1
file2
file3
file4

```

with 

```
$ wget -i files.txt

```

Is there a better solution for such a large amount in case I get timed out?
['https://superuser.com/questions/583558', 'https://superuser.com', 'https://superuser.com/users/187031/']
The solution is good and quite solid: with the proper options, `wget` will retry and download any file whose transfer got interrupted.

You can also script most command-line FTP clients, however (e.g. BSD ftp client). But `wget` is better in that you can configure it to not download files you already have, which makes it very convenient for syncs.

`wget` supports (on Linux at least) also rate limiting, and it is quite easy to distribute the file list between several files in order to download in parallel, or you can use [GNU parallel](http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/parallel).
lftp is pretty good at this. Note the *continue* and *expandnd wildcards* OPTS. 

```

lftp :~> help mirror
Usage: mirror [OPTS] [remote [local]]
Mirror specified remote directory to local directory
```

-c, --continue continue a mirror job if possible
 -e, --delete delete files not present at remote site
 --delete-first delete old files before transferring new ones
 -s, --allow-suid set suid/sgid bits according to remote site
 --allow-chown try to set owner and group on files
 --ignore-time ignore time when deciding whether to download
 -n, --only-newer download only newer files (-c won't work)
 -r, --no-recursion don't go to subdirectories
 -p, --no-perms don't set file permissions
 --no-umask don't apply umask to file modes
 -R, --reverse reverse mirror (put files)
 -L, --dereference download symbolic links as files
 -N, --newer-than=SPEC download only files newer than specified time
 -P, --parallel[=N] download N files in parallel
 -i RX, --include RX include matching files
 -x RX, --exclude RX exclude matching files
 RX is extended regular expression
 -v, --verbose[=N] verbose operation
 --log=FILE write lftp commands being executed to FILE
 --script=FILE write lftp commands to FILE, but don't execute them
 --just-print, --dry-run same as --script=-

When using -R, the first directory is local and the second is remote.
If the second directory is omitted, basename of first directory is used.
If both directories are omitted, current local and remote directories are used.

```

lftp :~> help mget
Usage: mget [OPTS] 
Gets selected files with expanded wildcards
 -c  continue, reget
 -d  create directories the same as in file names and get the
     files into them instead of current directory
 -E  delete remote files after successful transfer
 -a  use ascii mode (binary is the default)
 -O  specifies base directory or URL where files should be placed

```