I did this

Looking at the man page, in docs/cmdline-opts/create-dirs.d it says:

This option creates the directories mentioned with the --output option, nothing else.

In docs/cmdline-opts/output-dir.d it says:

If the specified target directory does not exist, the operation fails unless--create-dirs is also used.

I expected the following

A) If in fact the --create-dirs option creates the directories mentioned with the --output option, nothing else (nothing else, including the --output-dir option, for example), then for the --output-dir option, whether or not the operation fails would not depend on the --create-dirs option being used or not.

or B) If whether or not the operation fails depends on --create-dir also being used when the directory specified by --output-dir does not exist, then it sounds like the --create-dirs option creates directories mentioned in either the --output option or the --output-dir option (rather than just the --output option and nothing else).

I did not create a PR since 1) I'm not 100% sure which is the correct resolution above, A) or more likely B) and someone more familiar with curl internals would be able to use the correct terminology.

curl/libcurl version

curl 7.87.0

operating system

N/A