Many options and URLs

As mentioned above, curl supports hundreds of command-line options and it alsosupports an unlimited number of URLs. If your shell or command-line systemsupports it, there is really no limit to how long a command line you can passto curl.

curl parses the entire command line first, apply the wishes from thecommand-line options used, and then go over the URLs one by one (in a left toright order) to perform the operations.

For some options (for example-o or-O that tell curl where to store thetransfer), you may want to specify one option for each URL on the commandline.

curl returns an exit code for its operation on the last URL used. If youinstead rather want curl to exit with an error on the first URL in the setthat fails, use the--fail-early option.

One output for each given URL

If you use a command-line with two URLs, you must tell curl how to handle bothof them. The-o and-O options instruct curl how to save the output forone URL of the URLs, so you might want to have as many of those options asyou have URLs on the command line.

If you have more URLs than output options on the command line, the URL contentwithout a corresponding output instruction then instead gets sent to stdout.

Using the--remote-name-all flag automatically makes curl act as if-O wasused for all given URLs that do not have any output option.

Separate options per URL

In previous sections we described how curl always parses all options in thewhole command line and applies those to all the URLs that it transfers.

That was a simplification: curl also offers an option (-:,--next) thatinserts a boundary between a set of options and URLs for which it applies theoptions. When the command-line parser finds a--next option, it applies thefollowing options to the next set of URLs. The--next option thus works as adivider between a set of options and URLs. You can use as many--nextoptions as you please.

As an example, we do an HTTP GET to a URL and follow redirects, we then make asecond HTTP POST to a different URL and we round it up with a HEAD request toa third URL. All in a single command line:

curl --location http://example.com/1 --next  --data sendthis http://example.com/2 --next  --head http://example.com/3

Trying something like thatwithout the--next options on the command linewould generate an illegal command line since curl would attempt to combineboth a POST and a HEAD:

Warning: You can only select one HTTP request method! You asked for bothWarning: POST (-d, --data) and HEAD (-I, --head).