A more specific way to print out just the HTTP status code is something along the lines of:
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" example website
A lot easier to work with in scripts, as it doesn't require any parsing :-)
The parameter -I might be added to improve response load performance. This will change the call to a HEAD call which will fetch response overhead only, without the body.
Note: %{http_code} returns on first line of HTTP payload
i.e.:
curl -s -o /dev/null -I -w "%{http_code}" example website
