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Gnanam
Asked: 2010-08-18 04:40:14 +0800 CST

How to allow wget to overwrite files

  • 772

Using wget command, how do I allow/instruct to overwrite my local file everytime, irrespective of how many times I invoke.

Let's say, I want to download a file from the location: http://server/folder/file1.html

Here, whenever I say wget http://server/folder/file1.html, I want this file1.html to be overwritten in my local system irrespective of the time it is changed, already downloaded, etc. My intention/use case here is that when I call wget, I'm very sure that I want to replace/overwrite the existing file.

I've tried out the following options, but each option is intended/meant for some other purpose.

  1. -nc => --no-clobber
  2. -N => Turn on time-stamping
  3. -r => Turn on recursive retrieving
linux centos redhat command-line-interface wget

6 Answers

  1. This option works

    wget -N http://server/folder/file1.html

    info

    -N,  --timestamping            don't re-retrieve files unless newer than
                               local.
    • 8
  2. Best Answer
    wget -q http://www.whatever.com/filename.txt -O /path/filename.txt

    -q is quiet mode so you can throw it in a cron without any output from the command

    • 7

  3. Use curl instead?

    curl http://server/folder/file1.html > file1.html
    • 4

  4. I don't think you can do it unless you also download the directories (so pass the -x flag). If you know what the file is, you can do use -O filename, so for example:
    wget http://yourdomain.com/index.html -O index.html

    • 0

  5. Untried: maybe you can work with wget -r --level=0.

    Another possibility: curl -O overwrites (but it uses a different way of choosing the file name, which may or may not matter to you).

    • 0

  6. Why not put a small wrapper around the wget in your script?

    The script could move all the files to a temporary location, then wget the remote files / web pages.

    On success delete the files in the temporary location. On failure move the files back and raise an error.

    There isn't a simple way to do what you want using just wget unless you know specifically the name of all files, in which case the -O option will allow you to force the filename of the file downloaded.

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