11 · The Command Line

curl / wget

Fetch from the internet by command

Tools that download a URL or call an API straight from the terminal — curl is the Swiss-army version, wget is for simple file downloads.

Concrete example

“curl https://api.example.com/status” hits an API and prints the response — great for a quick test.

Why it matters

How you poke an API or grab a file without a browser, and how install scripts download themselves.