

Read the damn manpage - niggler
http://aniggler.tumblr.com/post/43245528876/read-the-damn-manpage

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rachelbythebay
Are you actually going after someone for a hostname resolution thing when the
"b" in "bcp" is for _broadcast_? As in, you run it on a subnet and they
"magically" find each other?

~~~
niggler
You can use broadcast addresses in nc, like with any other utility:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_address>

The comment itself suggested that the person didn't read the manpage (saw that
the synopsis said `hostname` and concluded that it didnt support ip address).
That seems like a pretty uninformed reading of the manpage.

More generally it's frustrating when self-proclaimed experts don't know all of
the command options (hard to be an expert without knowing what's going on).
I've done interviews where a candidate claims to be an expert with XYZ tool
and not know the most common features.

~~~
0x0
Why don't you give an example in your blog post on how you would use "nc" to
transfer a file between two machines without knowing their addresses, then?

(And.. are you sure TCP works on broadcast? Because on my OS X machine it
doesn't seem to take:

    
    
      % sudo nc -v 255.255.255.255 9696
      nc: connect to 255.255.255.255 port 9696 (tcp) failed: Permission denied
    
    )

