Why does the same curl -o file https://www.link.com/ command output different things?

For example if i run the command curl -o source.txt https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIx6FwnpuyNW9RxmWaGzKumLu-gUPy-q4 with a YouTube playlist link.

Linux output everything including all of the entries (titles, thumbnails, links, etc.).

Windows on the other hand will only output the layout of the page, skipping everything playlist stuff.

What am I missing here? Why is this the case and is there a different Windows command that achieves the same thing?

CodePudding user response：

Curl.exe is present in box on Windows machines with Windows 10 1803 or higher (which means since roughly March of 2018) and similar server releases.

However, curl (with no .exe) has a somewhat weird history and some shortcuts are left behind built into PowerShell, and I think that is what's causing you some grief.

What do I mean?

Give this a try on your machine.

get-command curl

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Alias           curl -> Invoke-WebRequest

You might be surprised to find that curl in PowerShell is an alias for a built-in cmdlet called Invoke-WebRequest. This acts somewhat similarly to curl in Linux or the curl.exe program, but is really quite different.

However, try that again with the full executable name.

 gcm curl.exe

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Application     curl.exe                                           7.55.1.0   C:\WINDOWS\system32\curl.exe

This means that running curl and running curl.exe are two different things!

If you try your command like so, it should be similar to what you find in Linux.

curl.exe -o source.txt https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIx6FwnpuyNW9RxmWaGzKumLu-gUPy-q4