Name

mconnect-io — converse with a line-protocol network server.

Synopsis

mconnect-io

Description

mconnect-io is a UCSPI-TCP/UCSPI-SSL client program that enables UNIX convention tools to have a conversation with a network server that speaks an Internet line-based protocol with CR+LF newlines. It is the internal workhorse of mconnect(1). It expects to be run via a program such as tcpclient(1) which makes the network connection to the server and sets up UCSPI environment variables.

Everything that it receives from its standard input, it sends to the network server, adding a CR at the end of every line (as if by addcr(1)). Everything that it receives from the network server, it sends to its standard output.

Note

This will only do the right thing interactively, when its standard input and output are a terminal device, if the line discipline has been configured into icrnl -onlcr -ocrnl mode, so that CR (often what a terminal's ⮠ Return key really sends) is translated to LF on terminal input and both CR and LF are left as-is on terminal output. mconnect-io takes no steps to ensure this, and relies upon something else such as stty(1) having configured the terminal device.

History

mconnect-io was originally part of Daniel J. Bernstein's ucspi-tcp toolset in 1999.

Author

Original code and documentation by Daniel J. Bernstein. Documentation modernizations by Jonathan de Boyne Pollard.