command line http request

[pajamabama]

Can anyone suggest a command line way of making a simple http request? Basically I want to make a shell script that will periodically request a cgi script on a web server. I just want to make the requset, I don't need to see the response. can lynx be used in this way?

Thanks.

[PWSwebmaster]

If you mean you want to call the script with variables, if the script takes a GET input, just call the script like:
scriptURL?var1=aaa&var2=bbb&var3=ccc and so on.

[pajamabama]

no, I'm looking for a command line utility that will make an http request. Something like ping, except that it does http.

I want to be able to say something like:

>cool_http_util http://www.pedorro.com/my_cgi.cgi

so that it activates the CGI script on the server.

[PWSwebmaster]

What about using wget? I just tested it on a script of mine that emails me when it's called in the browser and wget made it email me.

[pajamabama]

thanks!

wget --spider http://...

will suppress the actual download feature which is what I want.

It looks like 'curl' also does the trick.