cURL makes a web request and shows you the response body.
You can redirect the response body to /dev/null just like for many other programs. But if you do that, cURL will display some short information about the request you are making:
$ curl http://www.example.com/ > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 30865 100 30865 0 0 4793 0 0:00:06 0:00:06 --:--:-- 10199
If you want no output at all (for example for cronjobs), add the --silent switch:
curl --silent http://www.example.com/ > /dev/null
Posted by Arne Hartherz to makandra dev (2011-09-15 14:15)