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socat

brew install socat v1.8.1.1 GPL-2.0-only

Multipurpose relay for bidirectional data transfer between sockets, files, and processes; netcat alternative with advanced features.

Why you might care

Use socat when you need more flexibility than netcat: establish complex socket chains, relay between Unix sockets and TCP, fork connections per request, or proxy encrypted streams. Single binary handles SSL/TLS, socks, and non-blocking I/O natively, making it ideal for scripting network plumbing and debugging distributed systems without writing code.

Categories

networking http-client proxy

Alternatives

netcat nc ncat telnet
4.6k
30-day installs · #638
14.8k
90-day · #657
59.3k
365-day · #597

Runtime dependencies

openssl@3

Links

Blurb generated by claude-haiku-4-5 on today.

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