Question: Is anyone aware of any alternatives to curl and wget? The key functional requirement I'm looking for is to be able to execute an HTTPS GET request against a known URL.

The reason I'm looking for an alternative is simply that I'm trying to execute a connectivity test from a server which currently doesn't have wget or curl installed. The server concerned is under strict change control and so installing new software on it is a no-no.

The operating system installed on the server is AIX.

Answer: 
[Pushing up from comments]

Two options: 

* Batch mode from text-based browsers
such as links/lynx/w3m
* Use `openssl
s_client` as noted here:
[Connecting to HTTPS with netcat (nc)](https://serverfault.com/questions/102032/connecting-to-https-with-netcat-nc)
Have you got Perl with LWP::Simple?