Short: b Long: cookie Arg: Protocols: HTTP Help: Send cookies from string/file --- Pass the data to the HTTP server in the Cookie header. It is supposedly the data previously received from the server in a "Set-Cookie:" line. The data should be in the format "NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2". If no '=' symbol is used in the argument, it is instead treated as a filename to read previously stored cookie from. This option also activates the cookie engine which will make curl record incoming cookies, which may be handy if you're using this in combination with the --location option or do multiple URL transfers on the same invoke. If the file name is exactly a minus ("-"), curl will instead the contents from stdin. The file format of the file to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers (Set-Cookie style) or the Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format. The file specified with --cookie is only used as input. No cookies will be written to the file. To store cookies, use the --cookie-jar option. Exercise caution if you are using this option and multiple transfers may occur. If you use the NAME1=VALUE1; format, or in a file use the Set-Cookie format and don't specify a domain, then the cookie is sent for any domain (even after redirects are followed) and cannot be modified by a server-set cookie. If the cookie engine is enabled and a server sets a cookie of the same name then both will be sent on a future transfer to that server, likely not what you intended. To address these issues set a domain in Set-Cookie (doing that will include sub domains) or use the Netscape format. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. Users very often want to both read cookies from a file and write updated cookies back to a file, so using both --cookie and --cookie-jar in the same command line is common.