Initially, in the realm of programming languages, snarf meant to grab a large document or file and use it without the author's permission. Since the development of
UNIX, the UNIX community -- since there is not the same sense of proprietary ownership as there is in the commercial computer industry because it is based on an
open source idea -- uses the term to mean the acquisition of a file or set of files across a network. It is a command line resource grabber, transferring files through the
HTTP,
gopher,
finger and
FTP protocols without user interaction.
