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I need to use wget to download a file to the directory /var/cache/foobar/ (so, as an example, if I download stackexchange-site-list.txt, it'd be downloaded to /var/cache/foobar/stackexchange-site-list.txt)

Is this possible? curl would also be an option, but I'd prefer to not use curl, since it's not installed by default.

jrg
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    FYI, This information is available in `man wget` – user606723 Oct 28 '11 at 16:28
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    @user606723 Can you explain why this got downvotes? It's a legitimate question. – jrg Oct 31 '11 at 12:29
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    it's my guess that it was down voted because this is an extremely basic question and would've been solved by any sort of googling or looking in `man get`. The goal of stackexchange isn't to answer every possible question. – user606723 Dec 11 '11 at 22:38
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    This SO Q&A explains that you can do this using the `-P` switch, same w/ the A below. From the manual page: [How to specify the location with wget?](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1078539/33204). – slm May 07 '15 at 23:33
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    This is only a basic question to those who already know the answer. To anyone who doesn’t, it is *not* basic. Searching the man pages is not as simple as it sounds because they are quite long and few sane people with lives have the time or wherewithal to sit and read through all of that. The best argument you can make is that the man pages could be filtered with `grep` or something, but even that is not likely to give the answer due to wording. – Synetech Apr 10 '16 at 23:10

3 Answers3

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wget -P /var/cache/foobar/ [...]
wget --directory-prefix=/var/cache/foobar/ [...]
ephemient
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    -P lets wget start creating sub folders depending on how you select options to download. – Kendrick Apr 28 '14 at 15:07
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    -P seems to be the synonym for --directory-prefix. From the manual: ‘-P prefix’ ‘--directory-prefix=prefix’ Set directory prefix to prefix. The directory prefix is the directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to, i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is ‘.’ (the current directory). – Software Engineer Feb 20 '15 at 17:29
  • It seems to be silently & recursively creating the specified directoriy(s), if one either mistyped an actual directory path, or just outright non existent one. Additionally, the long form of the flag `--directory-prefix=` seems to be either not working correctly with shell expansion, or always ignites every path from the current relative path – polendina Sep 07 '22 at 04:08
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If you know the name of the file ahead of time, you can use the -O option to wget to tell it where to write the file.

wget -O /var/cache/foobar/stackexchange-site-list.txt http://url.to/stackexchange-site-list.txt
maxywb
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Tim Kennedy
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wget -e robots=off -r --no-parent /home/user/Desktop/MIT/ http://abc.tamu.edu/projects/tzivi/repository/revisions/2/raw/tzivi/

To add: The above code would allow you to download ALL files from the targeted directory to the directory of your choice in a single command.

Break Down of Command:

The Parameters for which wget uses to download the entire directory at once instead of one file at a time:

wget -e robots=off -r --no-parent

The Destination of Downloaded Files

/home/user/Desktop/MIT/

The Origin of Files (Online Directory)

http://abc.tamu.edu/projects/tzivi/repository/revisions/2/raw/tzivi/
Adamplex
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