Suggestions sought .... what else small and scriptable, other than awk and netcat, can you use to listen to a tcp socket and send text to a browser?

Suggestions sought .... what else small and scriptable, other than awk and netcat, can you use to listen to a tcp socket and send text to a browser?

Would you believe the shell? 

 

Here is an interesting web-page: http://blogmag.net/blog/read/49/Network_programing_with_bash

 

Joe L.

 

Check out this greatly simplified version of "wget" ( i don't think it works on binary files, but you can see the syntax to connect to a tcp socket.)

[pre]

#!/bin/bash

#http://blogmag.net/blog/read/49/Network_programing_with_bash

#

PATH=${2-/}

 

exec 6<>/dev/tcp/$1/80

 

echo -e "GET ${PATH} HTTP/1.1" >&6

echo -e "Host: $1\nConnection: close\n" >&6

echo "Reading: http://${1}${PATH}" >&2

 

#read and discard the header

while read <&6

do

    LINE=${REPLY//$'\r'/}

    if [ -z "$LINE" ]; then

        break

    fi

done

 

#read the page

while read <&6

do

    echo -n $REPLY >&1

done

# close the file descriptor

exec 6<&-

exec 6>&-

[/pre]

Ahh yes... the line:

 

exec 6<>/dev/tcp/$1/80

 

is what I needed.  Thanks!

 

Now I just need to figure out how to either 1) disable buffering, 2) set a small buffer, or 3) flush the buffer.

Spoke too soon... you can't listen on the bash tcp pseudo devices...

Not sure what you are trying to do, however it is possible to have a bash shell spawned from inetd which will connect stdin and stdout to the network connection.

I know, but this is part of a utility that needs to be run and stop... I can't leave an open port hanging out like that.

I know, but this is part of a utility that needs to be run and stop... I can't leave an open port hanging out like that.

 

Undertstood.

You might want to think about "awk"

Awk and netcat were in the OP.... but both buffer output, and that won't work for this project

 

Believe me, I tried awk for hours, but the damn buffering was killing me.