CURLOPT_IGNORE_CONTENT_LENGTH(3)

CURLOPT_IGNORE_CONTENT_LENGTH3

Ignore content length

Usage

#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_IGNORE_CONTENT_LENGTH,
                          long ignore);

Overview

If ignore is set to 1L, ignore the Content-Length header in the HTTP response and ignore asking for or relying on it for FTP transfers.

This is useful for doing HTTP transfers with ancient web servers which report incorrect content length for files over 2 gigabytes. If this option is used, curl cannot accurately report progress, and it instead stops the download when the server ends the connection.

It is also useful with FTP when for example the file is growing while the transfer is in progress which otherwise unconditionally causes libcurl to report error.

Only use this option if strictly necessary.

Default

0

Protocols

This functionality affects ftp and http

Examples

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode result;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com");
    /* we know the server is silly, ignore content-length */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_IGNORE_CONTENT_LENGTH, 1L);
    result = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
}

Return value

curl_easy_setopt(3) returns a CURLcode indicating success or error.

CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error occurred, see libcurl-errors(3).

Releases

7 releases since Debian 8 (Jessie); the text changed 6 times.

  1. 8
  2. 9
  3. 10
  4. 11
  5. 12
  6. 13
  7. Arch

History

Support for FTP added in 7.46.0.

Availability

Added in curl 7.14.1

From curl 8.23.0-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.