# Unleashing the Power of Curl: Simplifying SFTP File Transfers

You may have used tools like `scp`, `rsync`, `sftp`, and `lftp` to transfer files over SFTP. However, you can also accomplish this with `curl`. Using `curl` has its advantages, as you won't need to implement expect-scripts to handle password prompts or manual FTP get/put commands.

Here's an example snippet that downloads a file from a secure SFTP server using custom authentication.

```yaml
SFTP_HOST=sftp://172.18.1.100
SFTP_AUTH=user:12345678
SFTP_FILE=/data/files/$(date --date="1 day ago" +%Y%m%d)

curl -v -u $SFTP_AUTH $SFTP_HOST/$SFTP_FILE -o $SFTP_FILE 2>&1
```