title: \curl ... | bash ... what's the slash for?
body: <p>looking at the magic installers which appear for all types of projects (e.g. for rvm) you'll always see commands like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>\curl ... | bash
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>e.g.</p>
  
  <pre><code>\curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I was wondering why these commands start with a slash - they seem to run fine without it.</p>
  
  <p>Any suggestions?</p>