netcat vs. nc vs. hobbit's netcat

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From: b...@aljex.com
Subject: Re: netcat vs nc vs alternative network read/write utility
Date: 21 Mar 2005 08:38:42 -0800
Message-ID: <1111423122.808514.280060@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> 
References: <13ab4357.0503210058.7293ec1@posting.google.com> 

There are two different programs that go by the name "netcat"

The netcat you find on Tony's site is really the best thing for
printing to print servers. It's simple, has very few options, and runs
on any version of sco without any library updates. That is Kevin
Smith's netcat.

There is another "netcat" that has a lot of options and is a very
general purpose tool that receives, both in terms of when you initiate
a session it is two-way traffic, and in terms of, it can be set up to
listen like a server daemon, either stand-alon or via inetd, and can
even be told to run a program in response to a connection. This is
sometimes called the l0pht or hobbit's netcat, since the only clues to
it's origin are that the author called himself hobbit, and the last
known "home" for the source was a site called l0pht. This is also the
"nc" that most linux and bsd distributions include.

Then there are at least a couple other utils out there that do more or
less the same thing. One is called socat.
socat just has a couple differences that might make it work better for
some things.

It sounds like you already have Kevin Smith's netcat, and I have
hobbit's netcat and socat compiled for osr5 at:
http://www.aljex.com/bkw/sco/#nc
http://www.aljex.com/bkw/sco/#socat

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