I have a website that provides SFTP links in the format sftp://user@host.com/path/to/file.zip. To get this working via command line, I need to copy the link, and either run sftp user@host and then paste the path into the resulting shell:
$ > get /path/to/file.zip
Or I need to manipulate the URL into something like sftp user@host.com:/path/to/file/zip
Today I saw someone just run sftp sftp://user@host.com/path/to/file.zip and it worked just fine. When I do this it seems that sftp interprets the file path as part of the host and says
ssh: Could not resolve hostname host.com/path/to/file.zip
How can I get it working such that I can just run this? sftp sftp://user@host.com/path/to/file.zip
The URL syntax is supported by OpenSSH 7.7 and newer only.
As OpenSSH 7.7 is relatively new (2018-04-02), it is quite probable that you are using an older version.
Se also a related question Using sftp like scp.