It's a Windows convention (Or maybe a backward compatibility hack with DOS).

In Windows, the . is not a really part of the file name, just a separator between name and extension. In most cases using name and name. refers to the same file (name without an extension).

Try dir *.* on Windows command line. It behaves identically to WinSCP.

Actually WinSCP is made explicitly to mimic this convention, it's not any side-effect nor bug. See https://winscp.net/eng/docs/file_mask#exceptions

If you want to avoid downloading subdirectories, see:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/faq_script_non_recursive

Hello!

I´m having a problem. The home directory of the Ftp contains 30 Folders and some ".xls" files. When I run the following command,



, WinSCP is downloading all the .xls files but all the Folders too... The folders name are not containing any "." so I don´t understand why the command is not just downloading the .xls files.

I´m missing something??

(WinSCP 5.5.4)