wget

The wget command is short for "world wide web get". It is used to download files via the http, https and ftp protocols.

Example

wget https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/

This will download the web page from the location specified and store it in a file named index.html

wget has many options to control what and how it will execute. The manual specifies all the available options and is available at https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html. Here a few commonly used options.

r option (-r)

This is used to recursively download all linked files and directories up to 5 levels.

o option (-o)

This is used to specify the name of the output file when it is save locally.

Example

wget https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/ -o wget.html

This will download the web page from the location specified and store it in a file named wget.html

user, password options (--user, --password)

These options are used to specify a user name and password if they are required for authentication before being ablt o access a particular location

Example

wget https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/secure/protected.html --user admin --password secretWord

This will download the protected.html file if the user name and password are correct.

curl

The curl command is short for "see url". Similar to wget, it is used to download files via the http, https and ftp protocols. In most cases wget and curl can be used interchangeable. Two of the main differences are that curl can use many more protocols, not just the http, https and ftp protocols. However, curl cannot do recursion which is a big strength for wget.

curl will also output any response to the standard output window (stdout). This will make it display on the command line. To get curl to save the output to a file the -o option must be used to output the response to a file.

Example

curl https://curl.haxx.se -o curl.html