curl-curl/docs/wcurl.md
Viktor Szakats 62d77b12fc
spacecheck: check long lines and repeat spaces, fix fallouts
Verify if lines are not longer than 192 characters. Also verify if lines
have less than 79 repeat spaces (and fix one fallout).

To improve readability by avoiding long lines and to prevent adding
overly long lines with text that may go unnoticed in an editor or diff
viewer.

In addition to pre-existing line length limits: 79 for C, 132 for CMake
sources.

Also:
- spacecheck: fix/harden allowlist regexes.
- spacecheck: tidy-up quotes and simplify escaping.
- spacecheck: allow folding strings with repeat spaces.
- GHA: fix a suppressed shellcheck warning.
- GHA/macos: simplify by dropping brew bundle.
- test1119.pl: precompile a regex.
- FAQ.md: delete very long link to a Windows 7/2008 support article
  that's lost it relevance.

Closes #21087
2026-03-25 11:02:08 +01:00

4.3 KiB

c SPDX-License-Identifier Title Section Source See-also Added-in
Copyright (C) Samuel Henrique <samueloph@debian.org>, Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj@debian.org> and many contributors, see the AUTHORS file. curl wcurl 1 wcurl
curl (1)
trurl (1)
n/a

NAME

wcurl - a simple wrapper around curl to easily download files.

SYNOPSIS

wcurl <URL>...

wcurl [--curl-options <CURL_OPTIONS>]... [--dry-run] [--no-decode-filename] [-o|-O|--output <PATH>] [--] <URL>...

wcurl [--curl-options=<CURL_OPTIONS>]... [--dry-run] [--no-decode-filename] [--output=<PATH>] [--] <URL>...

wcurl -V|--version

wcurl -h|--help

DESCRIPTION

wcurl is a simple curl wrapper which lets you use curl to download files without having to remember any parameters.

Call wcurl with a list of URLs you want to download and wcurl picks sane defaults.

If you need anything more complex, you can provide any of curl's supported parameters via the --curl-options option. Beware that you likely should be using curl directly if your use case is not covered.

By default, wcurl does:

* Percent-encode whitespace in URLs;

* Download multiple URLs in parallel

if the installed curl's version is \>= 7.66.0 (--parallel);

* Use a total number of 5 parallel connections to the same protocol + hostname + port number target

if the installed curl's version is \>= 8.16.0 (--parallel-max-host);

* Follow redirects;

* Automatically choose a filename as output;

* Avoid overwriting files

if the installed curl's version is \>= 7.83.0 (--no-clobber);

* Perform retries;

* Set the downloaded file timestamp

to the value provided by the server, if available;

* Default to https

if the URL does not contain any scheme;

* Disable curl's URL globbing parser

so {} and [] characters in URLs are not treated specially;

* Percent-decode the resulting filename;

* Use 'index.html' as the default filename

if there is none in the URL.

OPTIONS

--curl-options, --curl-options=<CURL_OPTIONS>...

Specify extra options to be passed when invoking curl. May be specified more than once.

-o, -O, --output, --output=<PATH>

Use the provided output path instead of getting it from the URL. If multiple URLs are provided, resulting files share the same name with a number appended to the end (curl >= 7.83.0). If this option is provided multiple times, only the last value is considered.

--no-decode-filename

Do not percent-decode the output filename, even if the percent-encoding in the URL was done by wcurl, e.g.: The URL contained whitespace.

--dry-run

Do not actually execute curl, print what would be invoked.

-V, --version

Print version information.

-h, --help

Print help message.

CURL_OPTIONS

Any option supported by curl can be set here. This is not used by wcurl; it is instead forwarded to the curl invocation.

URL

URL to be downloaded. Anything that is not a parameter is considered an URL. Whitespace is percent-encoded and the URL is passed to curl, which then performs the parsing. May be specified more than once.

EXAMPLES

Download a single file:

wcurl example.com/filename.txt

Download two files in parallel:

wcurl example.com/filename1.txt example.com/filename2.txt

Download a file passing the --progress-bar and --http2 flags to curl:

wcurl --curl-options="--progress-bar --http2" example.com/filename.txt

Resume from an interrupted download. The options necessary to resume the download (--clobber --continue-at -) must be the last options specified in --curl-options. Note that the only way to resume interrupted downloads is to allow wcurl to overwrite the destination file:

wcurl --curl-options="--clobber --continue-at -" example.com/filename.txt

Download multiple files without a limit of concurrent connections per host (the default limit is 5):

wcurl --curl-options="--parallel-max-host 0" example.com/filename1.txt example.com/filename2.txt

AUTHORS

Samuel Henrique \<samueloph@debian.org\>
Sergio Durigan Junior \<sergiodj@debian.org\>
and many contributors, see the AUTHORS file.

REPORTING BUGS

If you experience any problems with wcurl that you do not experience with curl, submit an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/curl/wcurl

COPYRIGHT

wcurl is licensed under the curl license