Node Version Manager installation - what's "-o-" meaning?

Asked Feb 15 '18 at 21:47

Active Feb 15 '18 at 21:47

Viewed 41 times

Official NVM documentation states to install it in such way:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.8/install.sh | bash

If you look at curl help, there's -o described as:

-o, --output FILE   Write to FILE instead of stdout

Confusing a bit, how does the NVM command works? And why the extra - is added?

Thanks!

asked Feb 15 '18 at 21:47

Julius

3

The final `-` sends the output to stdout. In practice, this is the same behavior that `curl` without a `-o` flag will have. – benschumacher Feb 15 '18 at 21:49
Any idea why NVM docs wouldn't just pipe to bash then, if `-o-` is functionally the same? – bsinky Feb 15 '18 at 21:51
What's the benefit of this? Why is such used? Sorry - I'm just being curious of what I type in command line. – Julius Feb 15 '18 at 21:51
Probably someone used to wget where it writes to a file unless you tell it otherwise, or trying to write code that will have intent easily understood by people used to wget rather than curl. – Charles Duffy Feb 15 '18 at 21:54
BTW, `-o -` with the space is a bit more conventional. – Charles Duffy Feb 15 '18 at 21:55
I don't mind - I got my answer. Thanks all! – Julius Feb 15 '18 at 22:01

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