The FTP standard is not very clear on if pathname wild card patterns are to be supported by the FTP server. It strongly implies that it is the responsibility of the FTP Client to perform wild card pattern matching. If your FTP Client supports this, refer to its documentation for help.

However, historically, many FTP servers have attempted to perform wild card pattern matching where appropriate and when it doesn't conflict too much with the FTP standard. The MSS FTP Service will attempt to do this for the LIST (used for directory listings) and NLST (typically used for multiple get) commands. The LIST argument may be a full DCS pattern. The NLST argument only implements a subset as defined by the POSIX fnmatch function: the *, ? and [] patterns (i.e. no csh-style extensions).

The MSS FTP Service does implement the recent MLSD and MSLT commands, but as per their definitions, do not perform wild card pattern matching on their arguments. These commands may be used by FTP Clients to generate the input list for wild card pattern matching of their own.

If you issue a "get *" command to your FTP Client, it may have passed something different to the MSS FTP Service that did not match anything in your current working directory. Get the files manually or see if your FTP Client has a way to change its behavior.