GNU Wget in decline?

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=wget&cmpt=q

by wslh • 14 years ago

9 10 14 years ago

jimmyjim2• 14 years ago

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-13&q=wget%2...

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.

icebraining• 14 years ago

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.

jimmyjim2• 14 years ago

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 )

pooriaazimi• 14 years ago

I'm using wget for a project, basically because it's the only crawler on the planet that given a single URL, can download that page + all images, style sheets and scripts embedded in it without hassle (just with a flag: -p or --page-requisites).

It sucks however, because you can't redirect its output to another program and have to write the output to the file system (more I/O).

duaneb• 14 years ago

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.

tvon• 14 years ago

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.

jerf• 14 years ago

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

dasht• 14 years ago

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.

harbud2• 14 years ago

But curl curve is inclining.

harbud2• 14 years ago

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.

GNU Wget in decline?

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