wcurl.1

.\" generated by cd2nroff 0.1 from wcurl.md
.TH wcurl 1 "2026-01-05" wcurl
.SH NAME
\fBwcurl\fP \- a simple wrapper around curl to easily download files.
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBwcurl <URL>...\fP

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

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

\fBwcurl \-V|\--version\fP

\fBwcurl \-h|\--help\fP
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBwcurl\fP is a simple curl wrapper which lets you use curl to download files
without having to remember any parameters.

Simply call \fBwcurl\fP with a list of URLs you want to download and \fBwcurl\fP
picks sane defaults.

If you need anything more complex, you can provide any of curl\(aqs supported
parameters via the \fB\--curl\-options\fP option. Just beware that you likely
should be using curl directly if your use case is not covered.

By default, \fBwcurl\fP does:
.IP "* Percent-encode whitespace in URLs;"
.IP "* Download multiple URLs in parallel"
.nf
if the installed curl's version is \>= 7.66.0 (--parallel);
.fi
.IP "* Use a total number of 5 parallel connections to the same protocol + hostname + port number target"
.nf
if the installed curl's version is \>= 8.16.0 (--parallel-max-host);
.fi
.IP "* Follow redirects;"
.IP "* Automatically choose a filename as output;"
.IP "* Avoid overwriting files"
.nf
if the installed curl's version is \>= 7.83.0 (--no-clobber);
.fi
.IP "* Perform retries;"
.IP "* Set the downloaded file timestamp"
.nf
to the value provided by the server, if available;
.fi
.IP "* Default to https"
.nf
if the URL does not contain any scheme;
.fi
.IP "* Disable curl's URL globbing parser"
.nf
so {} and [] characters in URLs are not treated specially;
.fi
.IP "* Percent-decode the resulting filename;"
.IP "* Use 'index.html' as the default filename"
.nf
if there is none in the URL.
.fi
.SH OPTIONS
.IP "--curl-options, --curl-options=\<CURL_OPTIONS\>..."
Specify extra options to be passed when invoking curl. May be specified more
than once.
.IP "-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.
.IP --no-decode-filename
Do not percent\-decode the output filename, even if the percent\-encoding in the
URL was done by \fBwcurl\fP, e.g.: The URL contained whitespace.
.IP --dry-run
Do not actually execute curl, just print what would be invoked.
.IP "-V, \--version"
Print version information.
.IP "-h, \--help"
Print help message.
.SH CURL_OPTIONS
Any option supported by curl can be set here. This is not used by \fBwcurl\fP; it
is instead forwarded to the curl invocation.
.SH 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.
.SH EXAMPLES
Download a single file:

\fBwcurl example.com/filename.txt\fP

Download two files in parallel:

\fBwcurl example.com/filename1.txt example.com/filename2.txt\fP

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

\fBwcurl \--curl\-options="\--progress\-bar \--http2" example.com/filename.txt\fP

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

\fBwcurl \--curl\-options="\--clobber \--continue\-at \-" example.com/filename.txt\fP

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

\fBwcurl \--curl\-options="\--parallel\-max\-host 0" example.com/filename1.txt example.com/filename2.txt\fP
.SH AUTHORS
.nf
Samuel Henrique \<samueloph@debian.org\>
Sergio Durigan Junior \<sergiodj@debian.org\>
and many contributors, see the AUTHORS file.
.fi
.SH REPORTING BUGS
If you experience any problems with \fBwcurl\fP that you do not experience with
curl, submit an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/curl/wcurl
.SH COPYRIGHT
\fBwcurl\fP is licensed under the curl license
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR curl (1),
.BR trurl (1)