Talk:cURL

Move?

I think this article should be called CURL utility (or something like that). It would be consistant with Curl Programming Language. It seems a mistake to have two articles different, only by case (this and Curl. Does anybody agree? Without agreement, I won't touch it. --rob 21:33, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

cURL is the name of the program and should be the name of the article. --Pmsyyz 07:07, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, the article name is not cURL (no article can start with lower-case), it's CURL, which is close, but not the same as Curl, which is completely unrelated. I find that confusing, but I guess nobody else does. So, I guess we'll keep the approach of disambiguating the term at the top of each article, which will work as long as there are no more curls in the world. --rob 11:13, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm contemplating starting an article on CURL, once the Consortium of University Research Libraries but now apparently Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles ([1]). I'll probably call it something like CURL (organisation). At the very least, this is going to need an italic link at the top of the CURL and Curl pages, but I think I may do a disambiguation page. Any comments (here or on my Talk page)?

--GuillaumeTell 23:05, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the capitalisation as cURL refers to the software project, not the utility (which is curl). The scope of this page also looks to refer to the project as a whole. So maybe cURL (software project) rather than cURL utility.

--AndrewMcN 28 October 2019 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.52.60.79 (talk) 18:28, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Too Technical

A stopgap method to make the article somewhat more accessible to non-technical readers (without vastly re-writing everything) is to hyperlink each jargon term in the article to an article which is more accessible. For example, a non-technical reader does not know what bindings means in the context of this article, so I hyperlinked it. Teratornis 21:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I hyperlinked every jargon term in the article that I could find a suitable Wikipedia article for. I think this makes the article accessible to more people; heck, it makes the article more accessible to me. In general, when someone does not understand a passage of text, that means he or she does not know what some of the words mean. There are some pretty good articles describing most of the jargon terms in this article, and that should help someone new to the material get a foot in the door. I also added an Examples section with one simple command example (following the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (command-line examples)); would other cURL users please add more. Teratornis 18:27, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but if you are reading such page, you should know (as a basic) what are those protocols, operating systems, and other technical words. They are basic in the computer science world.

Sir, you fail at life and as a person for your arrogance. A reader could arrive at this page from ANYWHERE. They may have no idea what any of the "basic technical words" mean. [ælfəks] 07:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

This page has been tagged as being too technical for most readers to understand since March of 2009, but it does not seem too technical to me, especially if the reader follows the links to the more technical words. Unless someone objects, I am going to wait seven days and then remove the tag. Guy Macon (talk) 02:18, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Removing tag now. Guy Macon (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

This page seems like plagerism

Almost all of this page is cut and pasted directly from the cURL tutorial. I read that, and came here looking for more. There's nothing more here. I thought wikipedia had original information.

Wikipedia:No original research C xong (talk) 02:58, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Is the Wikipedia supposed to be documentation? Or is it supposed to have information that is typically not in documentation? Sam Tomato (talk) 16:38, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Scripting HTTP Requests Using Curl

I've removed the section on the grounds that it's plagiarism , and that Wikipedia is not a how-to. See the original document at http://curl.haxx.se/docs/httpscripting.html. bCube.talk(contribs); 00:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Please don't remove information you know is accurate from Wikipedia.

BCube, you are arguing that Wikipedia should have less information! The section "Scripting HTTP Requests Using Curl" is the minimum information necessary to use cURL. If it is too technical for you, then cURL is too technical for you. There are many subjects in Wikipedia that are too technical for someone. For example, the article on Testosterone says that the IUPAC name is 17b-hydroxy-4-androsten-3-one. Will you remove that because you don't understand it? Futurepower(R) 02:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Not Plagiarism: Edited with the encouragement of the author.

The section "Scripting HTTP Requests Using Curl" was posted with the permission of the author. The Wikipedia version was edited in many ways to make it more clear. You should not accuse someone of plagiarism if you have not communicated with the author. Futurepower(R) 02:50, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a lot of information that is available elsewhere.

The fact that the same information is available elsewhere is not an argument against it appearing in Wikipedia. It is valuable to have section "Scripting HTTP Requests Using Curl" in Wikipedia because then knowledgeable people can add to the information without having to ask the author of cURL. Futurepower(R) 02:50, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the name of the Wikipedia article about cURL should be changed.

I suggest the new name should be "CURL network utility". The disambiguation section for the name CURL should be retained, but point to the new computer utility name. Futurepower(R), 02:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

A better one: "cURL (software)" - PGSONIC 22:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The name of the project is cURL, the name of the softwares that is the output from the cURL project are curl and libcurl, the command line tool and the development library for URL transfers. So, "cURL" is actually not a software nor a tool, it is the name of the project.

Name of cURL's author?

Shouldn't we at least mention that the author and lead developer of cURL is Daniel Stenberg? He is also one of the many developers for the Rockbox project, opensource firmware for many mp3 players. I think at least we could give the man some credit for his good works.

Pronounciation

How do you pronounce this name? Is it Khurl or c-url? Olmer (talk) 13:07, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Stable Release Info

Hello, I'm trying to update the last Stable Release of cURL that actually is 7.38.0 on September 10, 2014 but I can't find where to edit it. The release information where comes from? 8110charlie (talk) 16:35, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

The release info comes best from the curl web site itself, see curl.haxx.se/changes.html has the full release history back to 1999. (Daniel, curl dev) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.174.211.166 (talk) 07:43, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

References

• Web security testing cookbook ... by O'Reilly ... by Ben Walther, Paco Hope, October 2008 ISBN: 9780596514839

• ch 7. 'Automating Specific Tasks with cURL  : looks good for cites/references

Djm-leighpark (talk) 18:42, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

What exactly IS curl? What does it DO?

The article does a terrible job of explaining what you actually do with this software in practice, only describing it in the most vague ways possible, like: "cURL is a command-line tool for getting or sending data including files using URL syntax." That really doesn't narrow it down much, there thousands of tools that do different things to which this description applies to.

Going through the history, I found an edit (13 September 2018) that deleted a huge junk of the article. This edit deleted all the examples. Looking at the last version that included them basically cleared up the confusion within seconds. So, I'm going to put the basic examples back in, because they do a better job at explaining this software than the entire rest of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:1206:4561:4C10:16B0:5C64:EC45:912 (talk) 07:19, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Improvements are welcome but more than one (I am hesitant to say two) example may result will result in reversions due to this being determined as a HOW-TO. The changes were in relation to the deletion discussion of 12 September 2018. That siad I may tweak the lede slightly ... Djm-leighpark (talk) 07:31, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Wow, that's a fast response. I just finnished adding some examples. I kept only the absolute bare minimum, and even shortend the text a bit. I hope you can keep these, because this is both a better explanation of what the tool actually does than anything else in the entire article, as well as the fastest way to explain it to anyone who knows what a "command line tool" even is (which is why many people will look at the example *first*) 2A02:1206:4561:4C10:16B0:5C64:EC45:912 (talk) 07:40, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

There is a wikilink to command line tool for those who do not know. The decision about the examples may be left to others; more than one can be a risk; I am increasingly tempted to whittle it down to one. And for my sins I have made some contributions to the article that you have just scummered. An alternative slightly more complex example accomodating insecure security certificates might be:

curl --insecure -o output.txt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CURL
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 65720  100 65720    0     0   123k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  456k

Djm-leighpark (talk) 08:16, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I think that would be way overcomplicating things already, and really isn't necessary. I mean, the most informative part of the article already got deleted once for a "compromise", so I'd rather just stick to the basics. And bringing up the --insecure flag? Why? You shouldn't even use that outside of a development environment or something like that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:1206:4561:4C10:16B0:5C64:EC45:912 (talk) 08:32, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

cURL to curl for command line tool

Proposal: Where we are talking about the command line tool (rather than the project including the library) within the article would it not make more sense to use curl rather than cURL within the section called curl. Will wait at least a week for objections.Djm-leighpark (talk) 08:16, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Just changed this as there are no objections. 88.10.158.248 (talk) 09:26, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Hyperwick recently made more cURL to curl changes. I suspect these don't respect the project vs. tool as discussed above. In any case, the title of the article is still cURL and the styling in the title should be consistent with the body. ~Kvng (talk) 14:53, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

As I understand it, "curl" is the tool, and my edits were intended to remove the notion that it is spelled "cURL". I would have change the title of the page but failed in my attempt as I'm recently engaged in (re)oining Wikipedia as an editor and wasn't thorough in that update! Thanks for your indulgence, and opportunity to participate. Hyperwick (talk) 07:33, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

History

The beginning of this article (currently) says that Curl is a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl). Did libcurl exist in 1997 when Curl was released? I assume that originally only the command-line tool existed and later the useful parts were split off into libcurl. Sam Tomato (talk) 16:58, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Bindings

Someone wants a "quotation" for the bindings claim and the [official site](https://curl.se/libcurl/bindings.html) listing over 60 of them should be a good source, but then again that's still of course using the same canonical source... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bagder (talk • contribs) 15:32, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Dates

The canonical source of curl historical data is on their main site https://curl.se/docs/history.html

The entry should be updated to reflect that, the current suggested start date is wrong (1997).

NoPolymath (talk) 08:48, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

It is a matter of interpretation. The wikidata item also had 1997 under 'inception', using the very same source you are referring to. The name curl was first used in 1997. But it continued the version numbering of its former names, so I agree 1996-11-11 should be considered the starting point. I have changed the wikidata inception accordingly. MichielN (talk) 06:12, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Correcting my own remark ("The name curl was first used in 1997"): urlget was renamed to curl in 1998. So 1997 as start date seems wrong either way. MichielN (talk) 06:04, 24 August 2023 (UTC)