Why does curl fail in this situation?

Question

I am trying to download the file from the following link:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sviewer/viewer.cgi?tool=portal&sendto=on&log$=seqview&db=nuccore&dopt=gilist&sort=&query_key=1&qty=12654729&filter=all

When pasting the above link in the address bar in a web browser(Chrome), it allows me to save file as "sequence.gi.txt".

But when I try that in a terminal, I get the following error:

curl -o test.txt http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sviewer/viewer.cgi?tool=portal&sendto=on&log$=seqview&db=nuccore&dopt=gilist&sort=&query_key=1&qty=12654729&filter=all
[1] 30036
[2] 30037
[3] 30038
[4] 30039
[5] 30040
[6] 30041
[7] 30042
[8] 30043
-bash: log$=seqview: command not found
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
101  7297    0  7297    0     0  59633      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 79315
[1]   Done                    curl -L -o test.txt http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sviewer/viewer.cgi?tool=portal
[2]   Done                    sendto=on
[3]   Exit 127                log$=seqview
[4]   Done                    db=nuccore
[5]   Done                    dopt=gilist
[6]   Done                    sort=
[7]-  Done                    query_key=1
[8]+  Done                    qty=12654729

How do I download the file in the command line?

Answer 1

The & in the url is telling bash that everything before it is a command that should be run in the background. So everything after each & is interpretted as a new command to run in the background, which is why you see a bunch of bogus processes get started when you try to run your command. Try putting the url in single quotes 'http://....' to avoid bash interpretting the $ and & characters as special characters:

curl -o test.txt 'http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sviewer/viewer.cgi?tool=portal&sendto=on&log$=seqview&db=nuccore&dopt=gilist&sort=&query_key=1&qty=12654729&filter=all'