Long: config Arg: Help: Read config from a file Short: K --- Specify a text file to read curl arguments from. The command line arguments found in the text file will be used as if they were provided on the command line. Options and their parameters must be specified on the same line in the file, separated by whitespace, colon, or the equals sign. Long option names can optionally be given in the config file without the initial double dashes and if so, the colon or equals characters can be used as separators. If the option is specified with one or two dashes, there can be no colon or equals character between the option and its parameter. If the parameter is to contain whitespace, the parameter must be enclosed within quotes. Within double quotes, the following escape sequences are available: \\\\, \\", \\t, \\n, \\r and \\v. A backslash preceding any other letter is ignored. If the first column of a config line is a '#' character, the rest of the line will be treated as a comment. Only write one option per physical line in the config file. Specify the filename to --config as '-' to make curl read the file from stdin. Note that to be able to specify a URL in the config file, you need to specify it using the --url option, and not by simply writing the URL on its own line. So, it could look similar to this: url = "https://curl.haxx.se/docs/" When curl is invoked, it (unless --disable is used) checks for a default config file and uses it if found. The default config file is checked for in the following places in this order: 1) curl tries to find the "home dir": It first checks for the CURL_HOME and then the HOME environment variables. Failing that, it uses getpwuid() on Unix-like systems (which returns the home dir given the current user in your system). On Windows, it then checks for the APPDATA variable, or as a last resort the '%USERPROFILE%\\Application Data'. 2) On windows, if there is no _curlrc file in the home dir, it checks for one in the same dir the curl executable is placed. On Unix-like systems, it will simply try to load .curlrc from the determined home dir. .nf # --- Example file --- # this is a comment url = "example.com" output = "curlhere.html" user-agent = "superagent/1.0" # and fetch another URL too url = "example.com/docs/manpage.html" -O referer = "http://nowhereatall.example.com/" # --- End of example file --- .fi This option can be used multiple times to load multiple config files.