curl Question

Hi, Has anyone ever used libcurl with PHP? libcurl is a library that allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols (eg httpds). What I don't understand is when do we need to use curl functions. In the documentation, an example is given as follows: <?php $ch = curl_init ("http://www.php.net/"); $fp = fopen ("php_homepage.txt", "w"); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_exec ($ch); curl_close ($ch); fclose ($fp); ?> This example uses PHP's CURL module to fetch the PHP homepage. But why do we need to use those curl functions at all?? I am getting so confused aboout writing client scripts which has to communicate with httpds. Would the standard client scripts work the same in a secure enviroment as in a standard one (httpd)? My understanding is that if I want to program clients that access secure web servers, I need to use say a perl module which allows me to SSL functions. If I just want to view web pages on https servers, I do not need this since my web browser already know to do that Anyone who has experience or know anything in about writing client scripts which talks to secure web server (httpds), please help me in clearing up the concepts. thanks ---Sonia