Examples in Python command line:

Try 1
-----

>>> import urllib2
urllib2.urlopen('ftp://<user>:<password>@<server>/packages/repodata').read().splitlines()

Output:
<list of files>

Try 2
-----

>>> import urllib2
urllib2.urlopen('ftp://<user>:<password>@<server>/packages/repodata').read().splitlines()

Output:
[]


If I split urllib2.urlopen().read().splitlines() statement in 2 statements (urllib2.urlopen() and read().splitlines()), I always get correct results.

import urllib2
a = urllib2.urlopen('ftp://<user>:<password>@<server>/packages/repodata')
>>> a.read().splitlines()

Output:
<file_list>


Verified in Python 2.6.6 in RHEL 6.4, Python 2.7.x in RHEL 7 and Python 2.7.3 in Ubuntu 14.04