

GNU Wget in decline? - wslh
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=wget&cmpt=q

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jimmyjim
[http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-13&q=wget%2...](http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-13&q=wget%2Ccurl&cmpt=q)

You can do everything you can do with wget - and more - with curl (though it
seems to be tending downward on that graph... not very sure what may be the
reason for that).

Nice text on HTTP scripting: <http://curl.haxx.se/docs/httpscripting.html>

And a total aside: <http://ifconfig.me/> is extremely awesome. I probably end
up using 'curl ifconfig.me' about once a day at least.

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icebraining
Wget can do something which curl can't: recursive downloading, and in
particular full site mirroring. It's not useful every day, but when I need it
I'm glad it's there.

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jimmyjim
Ah, you're right.

Here's a nice page detailing the differences between the two tools --
apparently written by the creator of curl itself:

<http://daniel.haxx.se/docs/curl-vs-wget.html> (and a more comprehensive chart
with additional tools: <http://curl.haxx.se/docs/comparison-table.html> )

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harbud
The lack of libwget does frustate me sometimes; I have to use wget strictly
via command-line. curl also has some nice features lacking in wget: selecting
HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1, support for multiple SSL libraries, etc. But wget surely
has many features that curl doesn't have.

In short, I use both.

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dasht
Wow, the curve indicating a decline of GNU Wget looks by eye to have the same
shape as the curve indicating a decline of Apache. The HTML curve looks pretty
similar. Javascript, too.

I think there's only one conclusion:

The web itself is in decline.

Incredible, I know, but this is science.

~~~
harbud
But curl curve is inclining.

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duaneb
One of the first things I do on a linux system is install curl. Wget only
outfeatures curl in very obscure ways, and I find it more annoying to use on a
day-to-day basis.

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tvon
Heh, one of the first things I _used_ to do on OSX as to install wget (having
come from Linux myself), but over time I ended up just learning what I needed
from curl.

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jerf
It's basically done. It's all the way on the right of the hype cycle. Is
tcpdump in decline? Is dig in decline?

