nc

Section: (pj)
Updated: 2022-01-20
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USAGE

nc [hostname] [port] is like telnet: it goes there. But error messages go to stderr, so scripting is easier.

nc -l [port] listens. You can still pump data into stdin, and it will go to whoever connects. This is handy to see what your browser/application is sending.

-q 0 means quit zero seconds after reading EOF on stdin. That is useful with -l if you are just piping something hardcoded.

A complete example:

: nc -q 0 -l 8011 <<EOF HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/plain
hello world! EOF

AUTHORS

Paul A. Jungwirth.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 21:16:02 GMT, January 04, 2026