what exactly does the rvm install command do

Question

On the rvm website the installation command is: $\curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash

I dont know what does the leading \ do? My first thought will be escape, but I am not sure what it is escaping for?

Answer 1

Escaping would disable any aliases that might have been set up.

Consider the following example:

$ alias curl="echo hey"             # alias curl
$ curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io      # executing curl invoked the alias
hey -sSL https://get.rvm.io

On the other hand, escaping curl would execute the binary curl instead of any alias that might exist.