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Curl vs. Wget

daniel.haxx.se

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Re: Curl vs. Wget

#31

Post by JonathonW »

For my usage:

* Wget's the interactive, end-user tool, and my go-to if I just need to download a file. For that purpose, its defaults are more sane, its command line usage is more straightforward, its documentation is better-organized, and it can continue incomplete downloads, which curl can't.

* Curl's the developer tool-- it's what I'd use if I were building a shell script that needed to download. The command line tool is more unix-y by default (outputs to stdout) and it's more flexible in terms of options. It's also present by default on more systems-- of note, OSX ships curl but not wget out of the box. Its backing library (libcurl) is also pretty nifty, but not really relevant to this comparison.

This doesn't really need to be an "emacs vs. vim" or "tabs vs. spaces"-type dichotomy: wget and curl do different things well and there's no reason why both shouldn't coexist in one's workflow.

Re: Curl vs. Wget

#32

Post by ars »

Xophmeister wrote: post #9
mooreds wrote: post #2

"Wget can be typed in using only the left hand on a qwerty keyboard!" I love both of these, but wish that curl was just like wget in that the default behavior was to download a file, as opposed to pipe it to stdout. (Yes, aliases can help, I know.)

Streaming to stdout is more Unix-y, allowing you to pipe the response into further processes. For example: curl http://api.example.com/json | jq '.["someKey"]' # etc., etc.

One nice thing about saving a file vs piping is that wget sets the timestamp on the file based on the remote HTTP headers.

curl -o does not.

Re: Curl vs. Wget

#34

Post by thematt »

mynewtb wrote: post #15

You should all check out wpull!

I love wpull!

I'm actually considering using it for a large upcoming project but unfortunately there are some pretty significant bugs in their backlog. wget seems to be a bit more battle hardened.

Re: Curl vs. Wget

#35

Post by eru »

JonathonW wrote: post #31

For my usage: * Wget's the interactive, end-user tool, and my go-to if I just need to download a file. For that purpose, its defaults are more sane, its command line usage is more straightforward, its documentation is better-organized, and it can continue incomplete downloads, which curl can't. * Curl's the developer tool-- it's what I'd use if I were building a shell script that needed to download. The command line…

Looks like a frontend to curl that has wget's defaults would be useful.

Re: Curl vs. Wget

#36

Post by cgh »

StreamBright wrote: post #4

There is no other industry where tools are debated so much as in IT. We literally waste tonns of hours on arguing over minor differences and nuances that really should not matter that much.

I have seen guitarists spend serious time debating picks.

Re: Curl vs. Wget

#37

Post by wdmeldon »

geerlingguy wrote: post #13

Also putting this out there—for nicer REST API interaction on the CLI, and a little more user-friendliness, you might also want to add HTTPie[1] to your toolbelt. It's not going to replace curl or wget usage, but it is a nicer interface in certain circumstances. [1] https://github.com/jkbrzt/httpie

This is an extremely minor quibble, but the dependency on Python makes me less inclined to use it. I'm stuck on Windows for a lot of the work I do so configuring Python is never fun and there is no one line installation method from what I can tell.

Putting it up on chocolatey[0] might be a good idea. Not sure how feasible that is however.

[0] https://chocolatey.org/packages?q=httpie

Re: Curl vs. Wget

#38

Post by recursive »

wdmeldon wrote: post #37
geerlingguy wrote: post #13

Also putting this out there—for nicer REST API interaction on the CLI, and a little more user-friendliness, you might also want to add HTTPie[1] to your toolbelt. It's not going to replace curl or wget usage, but it is a nicer interface in certain circumstances. [1] https://github.com/jkbrzt/httpie

This is an extremely minor quibble, but the dependency on Python makes me less inclined to use it. I'm stuck on Windows for a lot of the work I do so configuring Python is never fun and there is no one line installation method from what I can tell. Putting it up on chocolatey[0] might be a good idea. Not sure how feasible that is however. [0] https://chocolatey.org/packages?q=httpie

I've never needed to do more configuration for python than whatever the installer does. What problem are you having?

Re: Curl vs. Wget

#39

Post by eli »

JonathonW wrote: post #31

For my usage: * Wget's the interactive, end-user tool, and my go-to if I just need to download a file. For that purpose, its defaults are more sane, its command line usage is more straightforward, its documentation is better-organized, and it can continue incomplete downloads, which curl can't. * Curl's the developer tool-- it's what I'd use if I were building a shell script that needed to download. The command line…

Doesn't curl -C continue an incomplete download? Regardless agree that wget is better for just downloading a file.
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