cURL

Client for URLs ( cURL ) is a command line utility for transferring files in computer networks. The cURL program is under the MIT license and open has been ported to various operating systems. It is part of most Linux distributions and Mac OS X. The associated program library libcurl is used by many applications and programming languages.

History

Daniel Stenberg, the programmer of cURL, 1997 began to write a tool that should provide IRC participants data on exchange rates are available, which had to be retrieved from websites. He relied on the existing open - source tool httpget. After an extension to other protocols, the program was published as cURL 4 for the first time on 20 March 1998.

Functions

As the advertised name "Client for URLs ' suggests, it is a command line tool for downloading or uploading files through an Internet address also POST transmissions are possible. Supported protocols include, inter alia, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, DICT, LDAP, RTMP, and Gopher.

In contrast to the older Wget from 1995 cURL can not only download files, but also upload files.