CURL command execution

Question

Can anyone explain me the below curl command and how it works :

STATUS_CODE=`curl –output /dev/null –silent –head –write-out ‘%{http_code}\n’ $next` # If you want to set a timeout then add –max-time 15, here 15 is 15seconds 

Answer 1

You seem to be missing a few double dashes, probably the result of copy and paste:

STATUS_CODE=`curl --output /dev/null --silent --head --write-out ‘%{http_code}\n’ $next` 

Assuming that you call this with next being a url (e.g. in a loop or reading from a file):

• --output /dev/null discards the normal output
• --silent suppresses the progress meter
• --head fetch header only
• --write-out '%{http_code}\n' prints the status code

So in the end the status of the URL request ends up in STATUS_CODE

(And if you want to set the timeout, then use double dashes too: --max-time).