[man-pages] Discrepancy between --fail-with-body and --fail

From: Vincent MAILHOL via curl-users <curl-users_at_lists.haxx.se>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:14:55 +0900

Hello,

The documentation of --fail-with-body and --fail seems to contradict each other.

The manpage for --fail-with-body says [1]:

  --fail-with-body

    (HTTP) Return an error on server errors where the HTTP response
    code is 400 or greater). In normal cases when an HTTP server fails
    to deliver a document, it returns an HTML document stating so
    (which often also describes why and more). This option allows curl
    to output and save that content but also to return error 22.

    This is an alternative option to -f, --fail which makes curl fail
    for the same circumstances but without saving the content.

    (...)

and --fail says [2]:

  -f, --fail

    (...)

    This method is not fail-safe and there are occasions where
    non-successful response codes slip through, especially when
    authentication is involved (response codes 401 and 407).

    (...)


By paraphrasing above quotations, we basically have three pieces of information:

  1. --fail-with-body returns an error if the http response code is
     400 or greater

  2. --fail-with-body and --fail would fail under the same circumstances

  3. for --fail, error code between 401 and 407 would "slip through"

Those three conditions result in a logical contradiction. At least one
of those should be incorrect. To the extent of my knowledge, the third
one seems incorrect, but not fully sure of that.

Thank you for your comments.


References:

[1] curl manpage, option --fail-with-body
Link: https://curl.se/docs/manpage.html#--fail-with-body

[2] curl manpage, option -f, --fail
Link: https://curl.se/docs/manpage.html#--fail


Yours sincerely,
Vincent Mailhol

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Received on 2024-04-23