What is the easiest way to use the HEAD command of HTTP in PHP?

You can do this neatly with cURL:

<?php
// create a new cURL resource
$ch = curl_init();

// set URL and other appropriate options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.example.com/");

// This changes the request method to HEAD
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);

// grab URL and pass it to the browser
curl_exec($ch);

// Edit: Fetch the HTTP-code (cred: @GZipp)
$code = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE); 

// close cURL resource, and free up system resources
curl_close($ch);

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