[ On Thursday, October 11, 2001 at 23:24:05 (-0500), Eric Gillespie, Jr. wrote: ]
> Subject: Proposal for new utility in base: bin/nc
>
> I soon learned is that the original nc is unmaintainable and very
> crufty.  So i started from scratch.  This new implementation is
> small and clean, and supports IPv6.

Thank you!  I wanted to do exactly the same thing but never got around
to it.  I too find the lack of a 'netcat'-like tool to be a major gap in
any modern Unix with otherwise integrated networking facilities.  To not
be able to do low-level network operations from shell scripts would be
like not being able to directly manipulate files from shell scripts!

Feature request (something I started trying to hack into Hobbit's
version, but couldn't quite manage to get working -- or rather kept
breaking other things in that most unmaintainable spaghetti ;-):  I need
a very simple "line mode" so that 'nc' can be used in place of telnet to
do things like converse with SMTP daemons; with (optional) EOL
conversions too, of course....

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>     <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>;   Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>