Why start a shell command with a backslash?

Question

``` \curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable ``` Why is the command starting with `\`? This is the site where I saw it.

Accepted Answer

```
alias curl='curl --some --default --options'
```

If you have an alias for `curl` and you don't want to use it, putting a backslash in front disables the alias and runs the curl binary directly.

Note that this only applies at an interactive shell. Aliases don't take effect in scripts so it would be unnecessary there.

Solution