From: Daniel Stenberg <daniel@haxx.se>
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2020 22:38:52 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: curl.1: add an "OUTPUT" section at the top of the manpage
X-Git-Tag: curl-7_74_0~125
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=5106f1dc404e1bd9c38445597d33ce32b4df7cd8;p=thirdparty%2Fcurl.git

curl.1: add an "OUTPUT" section at the top of the manpage

Explain the basic concepts behind curl output.

Inspired by #6124

Closes #6134
---

diff --git a/docs/cmdline-opts/page-header b/docs/cmdline-opts/page-header
index a51e485bab..62e97120d3 100644
--- a/docs/cmdline-opts/page-header
+++ b/docs/cmdline-opts/page-header
@@ -99,6 +99,15 @@ getting many files from the same server will not do multiple connects /
 handshakes. This improves speed. Of course this is only done on files
 specified on a single command line and cannot be used between separate curl
 invokes.
+.SH OUTPUT
+If not told otherwise, curl writes the received data to stdout. It can be
+instructed to instead save that data into a local file, using the --output or
+--remote-name options. If curl is given multiple URLs to transfer on the
+command line, it similarly needs multiple options for where to save them.
+
+curl does not parse or otherwise "understand" the content it gets or writes as
+output. It does no encoding or decoding, unless explictly asked so with
+dedicated command line options.
 .SH PROTOCOLS
 curl supports numerous protocols, or put in URL terms: schemes. Your
 particular build may not support them all.