zipping a file on an FTP site

[K9 Kai Niggemann]

On 11.03.2011, at 00:41, Jonny Stutters wrote:

> On 10 Mar 2011, at 23:33, K9 Kai Niggemann wrote:
> 
>> helo, 
>> 
>> what do I need to zip a file on my FTP server? Anything beyond Terminal (I'm on OS X 10.6.6)? "help" inside my FTP client (standard Apple client) didn't return much that I found useful.
> 
> Do you have shell access on the server (ie. can you ssh to it?)?  There's no way that I'm aware of to zip a file remotely using just an FTP connection (I suppose maybe you could write a php script that called the necessary shell commands and go that way but it'd be a hassle and there'd probably be issues with that method).

no/yes, I can sftp, not ssh to it. then I can escape to the shell and use zip? But that makes only limited sense even to me..

Is there hope?
Kai