Nquire

# 2) Fetch NCBI database metadata with a direct GET request
PATH=/home/vimalinx/miniforge3/envs/bio/bin:$PATH \
nquire -get https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/einfo.fcgi |
sed -n '1,20p'

# 3) Use the built-in EUtils shortcut instead of spelling out the base URL
PATH=/home/vimalinx/miniforge3/envs/bio/bin:$PATH \
nquire -eutils esearch.fcgi -db pubmed -term 'tn3 transposition immunity'

Recommended Workflow

1. Decide whether the endpoint expects POST (-url) or GET (-get) before constructing the request.
2. Prefer built-in shortcuts such as -eutils, -pubchem, -pugrest, or -datasets when they match your target service.
3. Smoke-test one request and inspect the raw payload before building a larger parser or downloader around it.
4. Pipe successful responses into xtract, transmute, or downstream shell filters only after the transport layer is behaving predictably.

Guardrails

• -h and --help both print the same built-in usage text; -version returns the plain string 24.0.
• This wrapper appends its own bin directory to PATH, so sibling EDirect helpers remain discoverable even when you invoke it by absolute path.
• -url means HTTP POST, while -get means HTTP GET. Mixing them up is an easy way to get confusing server responses.
• FTP-style listing is not always reliable in the current environment. A live -lst ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/... smoke test failed here with curl: (56) response reading failed.
• Optional Aspera downloads (-asp) depend on a working client install and can be disabled with EDIRECT_NO_ASPERA=true.
• Hidden environment knobs such as NQUIRE_HELPER, NQUIRE_TIMEOUT, and NQUIRE_IPV4 can change transport behavior, so record them in reproducible workflows if you use them.