CURLOPT_IGNORE_CONTENT_LENGTH - ignore content length

Added in curl 7.14.1

0

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.

int main(void) { CURL *curl = curl_easy_init(); if(curl) { 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); curl_easy_perform(curl); } }

Support for FTP added in 7.46.0.

CURLOPT_IGNORE_CONTENT_LENGTH - ignore content length

This functionality affects ftp and http

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).

CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION(3), CURLOPT_MAXFILESIZE_LARGE(3) libcurl 2025-06-16 CURLOPT_IGNORE_CONTENT_LENGTH(3)

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