Asking curl to skip missing files

Question

Is there any way to tell curl not to download a file when it does not exist on the server?

I am using my Mac OS X shell to download a few files with curl.

The command goes:

curl -s -# "http://URL/session[1-12].pdf" -o "Slides/session#1.pdf";

Is there any way I can tell curl to skip, say, session4.pdf, when that file does not actually exist? It downloads empty 2KB files instead by default.

P.S. I hope I am posting this at the right place, apologies if it should go to the Apple StackExchange branch. Since it's shell, I though this would be more appropriate.

Answer 1

Use the -f, --fail option to ask curl to silently skip errors and it will not produce empty files.

In other words, your command should be:

curl -f -s -# "http://URL/session[1-12].pdf" -o "Slides/session#1.pdf";