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FETCH(1)		    General Commands Manual		      FETCH(1)

NAME
       fetch --	retrieve a file	by Uniform Resource Locator

SYNOPSIS
       fetch   [-146AFMPRUadlmnpqrsv]  [-B  bytes]  [-S	 bytes]	 [-T  seconds]
	     [-N file] [-o file] [-w seconds] [-h host]	 [-c  dir]  [-f	 file]
	     [URL ...]

DESCRIPTION
       The fetch utility provides a command-line interface to the fetch(3) li-
       brary.  Its purpose is to retrieve the file(s) pointed to by the	URL(s)
       on the command line.

       The following options are available:

       -1	   Stop	 and  return exit code 0 at the	first successfully re-
		   trieved file.

       -4	   Forces fetch	to use IPv4 addresses only.

       -6	   Forces fetch	to use IPv6 addresses only.

       -A	   Do not automatically	follow ``temporary'' (302)  redirects.
		   Some	 broken	 Web sites will	return a redirect instead of a
		   not-found error when	the requested object does not exist.

       -a	   Automatically retry the transfer upon soft failures.

       -B bytes	   Specify the read buffer size	in bytes.  The default is 4096
		   bytes.  Attempts to set a buffer size lower than this  will
		   be  silently	 ignored.   The	 number	of reads actually per-
		   formed is reported at verbosity level two  or  higher  (see
		   the -v flag).

       -c dir	   The	file  to  retrieve  is	in directory dir on the	remote
		   host.  This option is deprecated and	is provided for	 back-
		   ward	compatibility only.

       -d	   Use a direct	connection even	if a proxy is configured.

       -F	   In  combination  with the -r	flag, forces a restart even if
		   the local and  remote  files	 have  different  modification
		   times.  Implies -R.

       -f file	   The	file  to  retrieve  is	named file on the remote host.
		   This	option is deprecated and is provided for backward com-
		   patibility only.

       -h host	   The file to retrieve	is located on the host host.  This op-
		   tion	is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibil-
		   ity only.

       -l	   If the target is a file-scheme URL, make a symbolic link to
		   the target rather than trying to copy it.

       -M

       -m	   Mirror mode:	if the file already exists locally and has the
		   same	size and modification time as the remote file, it will
		   not be fetched.  Note that the -m and -r flags are mutually
		   exclusive.

       -N file	   Use file instead of ~/.netrc	to look	 up  login  names  and
		   passwords  for  FTP sites.  See ftp(1) for a	description of
		   the file format.  This feature is experimental.

       -n	   Do not preserve the modification time  of  the  transferred
		   file.

       -o file	   Set	the  output  file name to file.	 By default, a ``path-
		   name'' is extracted from the	specified URI, and  its	 base-
		   name	 is used as the	name of	the output file.  A file argu-
		   ment	of `-' indicates that results are to  be  directed  to
		   the	standard output.  If the file argument is a directory,
		   fetched file(s) will	be placed within the  directory,  with
		   name(s) selected as in the default behaviour.

       -P

       -p	   Use	passive	FTP.  This is useful if	you are	behind a fire-
		   wall	which blocks incoming connections.  Try	this  flag  if
		   fetch seems to hang when retrieving FTP URLs.

       -q	   Quiet mode.

       -R	   The	output	files  are precious, and should	not be deleted
		   under any circumstances, even if the	transfer failed	or was
		   incomplete.

       -r	   Restart a previously	interrupted transfer.  Note  that  the
		   -m and -r flags are mutually	exclusive.

       -S bytes	   Require  the	 file size reported by the server to match the
		   specified value.  If	it does	not, a message is printed  and
		   the	file  is  not fetched.	If the server does not support
		   reporting file sizes, this option is	ignored	and  the  file
		   is fetched unconditionally.

       -s	   Print  the  size  in	 bytes of each requested file, without
		   fetching it.

       -T seconds  Set timeout value to	seconds.   Overrides  the  environment
		   variables FTP_TIMEOUT for FTP transfers or HTTP_TIMEOUT for
		   HTTP	transfers if set.

       -U	   When	using passive FTP, allocate the	port for the data con-
		   nection  from  the low (default) port range.	 See ip(4) for
		   details on how to specify which port	range this corresponds
		   to.

       -v	   Increase verbosity level.

       -w seconds  When	the -a flag is specified, wait this many  seconds  be-
		   tween successive retries.

       If  fetch  receives  a  SIGINFO	signal	(see  the  status argument for
       stty(1)), the current transfer rate statistics will be written  to  the
       standard	 error	output,	 in the	same format as the standard completion
       message.

ENVIRONMENT
       FTP_TIMEOUT   Maximum time, in seconds, to wait before aborting an  FTP
		     connection.

       HTTP_TIMEOUT  Maximum time, in seconds, to wait before aborting an HTTP
		     connection.

       See fetch(3) for	a description of additional environment	variables, in-
       cluding	FETCH_BIND_ADDRESS, FTP_LOGIN, FTP_PASSIVE_MODE, FTP_PASSWORD,
       FTP_PROXY,    ftp_proxy,	    HTTP_AUTH,	   HTTP_PROXY,	   http_proxy,
       HTTP_PROXY_AUTH,	 HTTP_REFERER,	HTTP_USER_AGENT,  NETRC,  NO_PROXY and
       no_proxy.

EXIT STATUS
       The fetch command returns zero on success, or one on failure.  If  mul-
       tiple  URLs  are	 listed	on the command line, fetch will	attempt	to re-
       trieve each one of them in turn,	and will return	zero only if they were
       all successfully	retrieved.

SEE ALSO
       fetch(3)

HISTORY
       The fetch command appeared in FreeBSD 2.1.5.  This implementation first
       appeared	in FreeBSD 4.1.

AUTHORS
       The original implementation of fetch  was  done	by  Jean-Marc  Zucconi
       <jmz@FreeBSD.org>.   It	was  extensively  re-worked for	FreeBSD	2.2 by
       Garrett Wollman <wollman@FreeBSD.org>, and later	 completely  rewritten
       to use the fetch(3) library by Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@FreeBSD.org>.

NOTES
       The  -b	and -t options are no longer supported and will	generate warn-
       ings.  They were	workarounds for	bugs in	other OSes which  this	imple-
       mentation does not trigger.

       One  cannot  both use the -h, -c	and -f options and specify URLs	on the
       command line.

FreeBSD	7.1			March 11, 2003			      FETCH(1)

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