Apologies if 'wget' can already do this, but I've just read all of `info wget` and I'm not seeing it: how to make 'wget' print what it would do, without actually doing it?

I regularly use 'rsync' to move large amounts of data recursively. Being the cautious type, unless I already have an rsync-invoking script for the situation, I iteratively create a script using rsync's --dry-run switch: this allows me to verify whether I am using the appropriate command options relatively rapidly, without enduring a time-wasting (or data-destroying) failure or incompleteness.

'wget' can't destroy data, AFAIK, but like 'rsync'

• 'wget' also has an {impressive, hard to remember} set of {features, switches, options}

• I use 'wget' to move some very large files (e.g. multi-gigabyte NetCDFs).

Hence I would like to be able to invoke 'wget' with semantics like `rsync --dry-run`: parse the rest of your options, and tell me what you would download based on the options I have passed, but don't actually download anything.

Note this feature request has been previously asked for @

http://www.mail-archive.com/wget@sunsite.dk/msg07896.html

and seems to be a superset of bug#=20377

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?20377

which refers to the 'apt-get' --print-uri switch. I don't use that but it seems to provide similar semantics.

Implementation-wise, it may be related to these bugs (which point to each other)

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?20645 https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?20714

but I'm just guessing there.

TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>