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No, OP said…

> you would have to do `curl url://to/file.htm > file.htm` or some other, less ergonomical, incantation

… which begs the conclusion that OP is unaware of `-O`.

I'm well aware of curl's -O (long form: --remote-name), but it has an unfortunate clash with an option of the same name from wget (long form: --output-document). These options have closely related yet very different meanings. Using these options without looking at the manpage fills me with a sense of dread that I prefer to avoid.

man curl | grep -C 2 " -O"

--remote-name-all This option changes the default action for all given URLs to be dealt with as if -O, were used for each one. So if you want to disable that for a specific URL after --remote-name-all has been used, you must use "-o -" or --no-remote-name.

alias curl='curl --remote-name-all'

I was obviously responding to the curl command they posted. I didn't say anything about default behaviour.