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Every time I see a cURL update I always wonder why I use wget without a second thought, but cURL has so much more capabilities. If I need a more advance downloa

by baldfat 10y ago

Every time I see a cURL update I always wonder why I use wget without a second thought, but cURL has so much more capabilities. If I need a more advance download cli program I then skip cURL and go to Aria2C which many times is just over kill. I need to force myself to use cURL more and not worry about how the syntax currently makes me feel.

d33 10y ago
Perhaps the default behavior changes things? In wget, you download a file, in curl you display it. If you just want to download it, it saves you typing. My personal main usage of cURL is when reproducing requests made by a browser - using something like Chromium's F12 or Firebug, clicking on the "Network" tab and in the context menu for a request clicking "Copy as cURL". Invaluable.
- tobylane 10y ago
  -O is one of few curl options I've memorised. It downloads to a file named the same as the source.
- cyborgx7 10y ago
  I have to say, I love that default behaviour. Too many newer command line programms need some obscure option to make them write to stdout. Some let you replace the filename with a dash but too many of them don't follow that standard, so that I still have to open the manpage to get them to do what really should be the default behaviour. And it's perfect for my usecase, which mostly involves piping the result into other command line utilities like sed or grep in shell scripts.
  - d33 10y ago
    If any program doesn't use - to let you write to stdout, just use /dev/stdout. It's usually going to work unless there's a check whether it's a regular file or unless program tries to seek (e.g. compression programs).
- amazingman 10y ago
  >Perhaps the default behavior changes things? In wget, you download a file, in curl you display it. If you just want to download it, it saves you typing. This. If you want to wean yourself off of wget, perhaps aliasing wget to `curl -O` will help. It helped me :)
viraptor 10y ago
I do the same for downloads and I don't care anymore. It's my default and whatever extra features curl has, I don't need them apart from very specific circumstances. (mostly testing APIs) Why force yourself to use curl if there are no benefits in the most common case?
tombert 10y ago
I almost never actually use wget...I have an alias set in my bash config that translates `wget` to `curl -O`. I'm not entirely sure why I do that, actually...I think I was trying to impress someone by how few dependencies I had like four years ago and it stuck.

by baldfat 10y ago

d33 10y ago

Perhaps the default behavior changes things? In wget, you download a file, in curl you display it. If you just want to download it, it saves you typing. My personal main usage of cURL is when reproducing requests made by a browser - using something like Chromium's F12 or Firebug, clicking on the "Network" tab and in the context menu for a request clicking "Copy as cURL". Invaluable.

tobylane 10y ago
-O is one of few curl options I've memorised. It downloads to a file named the same as the source.
cyborgx7 10y ago
I have to say, I love that default behaviour. Too many newer command line programms need some obscure option to make them write to stdout. Some let you replace the filename with a dash but too many of them don't follow that standard, so that I still have to open the manpage to get them to do what really should be the default behaviour. And it's perfect for my usecase, which mostly involves piping the result into other command line utilities like sed or grep in shell scripts.
- d33 10y ago
  If any program doesn't use - to let you write to stdout, just use /dev/stdout. It's usually going to work unless there's a check whether it's a regular file or unless program tries to seek (e.g. compression programs).
amazingman 10y ago
>Perhaps the default behavior changes things? In wget, you download a file, in curl you display it. If you just want to download it, it saves you typing. This. If you want to wean yourself off of wget, perhaps aliasing wget to `curl -O` will help. It helped me :)

viraptor 10y ago

I do the same for downloads and I don't care anymore. It's my default and whatever extra features curl has, I don't need them apart from very specific circumstances. (mostly testing APIs) Why force yourself to use curl if there are no benefits in the most common case?

tombert 10y ago

I almost never actually use wget...I have an alias set in my bash config that translates `wget` to `curl -O`. I'm not entirely sure why I do that, actually...I think I was trying to impress someone by how few dependencies I had like four years ago and it stuck.