That's the new and improved version of FTP! Before "passive mode" the old one would try and directly connect with your machine on some random port. If you were behind a NAT firewall you couldn't use it at all.

On top of that there's never been a coherent standard for what directory listings are supposed to look like so there's no reliable way to emit directories in a machine readable format. It's always been arbitrary text.

The whole thing is junk and has deserved to die the day it was born.