Passing a URL with brackets to curl

Question

If I try to pass a URL to curl that contains brackets, it fails with an error:

$ curl \'http://www.google.com/?TEST[]=1\'
curl: (3) [globbing] illegal charac         


        

Answer 1

Globbing uses brackets, hence the need to escape them with a slash \. Alternatively, the following command-line switch will disable globbing:

--globoff (or the short-option version: -g)

Ex:

curl --globoff https://www.google.com?test[]=1

Answer 2

Never mind, I found it in the docs:

-g/--globoff
              This  option  switches  off  the "URL globbing parser". When you set this option, you can
              specify URLs that contain the letters {}[] without having them being interpreted by  curl
              itself.  Note  that  these  letters  are not normal legal URL contents but they should be
              encoded according to the URI standard.