Overview
curl (pronounced like "curl", , ) is a computer software project providing a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl) for transferring data using various network protocols. The name stands for "Client for URL".
History
curl was first released in 1996. It was originally named httpget and then became urlget before adopting the current name of curl The original author and lead developer is the Swedish developer Daniel Stenberg, who created curl because he wanted to automate the fetching of currency exchange rates for IRC users.
libcurl
libcurl is a free client-side URL transfer library, supporting cookies, DICT, FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP/1 (with HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support), HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, HTTP proxy tunneling, HTTPS, IMAP, Kerberos, LDAP, MQTT, POP3, RTSP, RTMP, SCP, SMTP, and SMB. The library supports the file URI scheme, SFTP, Telnet, TFTP, file transfer resume, FTP uploading, HTTP form-based upload, HTTPS certificates, LDAPS, proxies, and user-plus-password authentication.
The libcurl library is portable. It builds and works identically on many platforms, including AIX, AmigaOS, Android, BeOS, BlackBerry Tablet OS and BlackBerry 10, OpenVMS, Darwin, DOS, FreeBSD, HP-UX, HURD, iOS, IRIX, Linux, macOS, NetBSD, NetWare, OpenBSD, OS/2, QNX Neutrino, RISC OS, Solaris, Symbian, Tru64, Ultrix, UnixWare, and Microsoft Windows.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).