Document caveats with BSD netcat vs GNU netcat vs socat etc

[NightMachinery]

nc has different implementations on different systems. Using gnu nc (which is installable by brew on any system) with the -c flag works best in my experience. This flag may not be present on other implementations or may not work correctly.

[wincent]

Platform differences are the main reason the -executable and -flags arguments are provided, so that people can make Clipper work on arbitrary systems. On the nc side, Clipper itself isn't going to get in your way if you want to invoke it one way or another. Are you suggesting that we make a note about the possible differences in nc in the docs somewhere? If so, what exactly would you suggest?

[NightMachinery]

Yeah, I suggest you recommend using gnu nc with the c flag on the docs, so that things Just Work for new people.

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On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 11:46 PM Greg Hurrell ***@***.***> wrote: Platform differences are the main reason the -executable and -flags arguments are provided, so that people can make Clipper work on arbitrary systems. On the nc side, Clipper itself isn't going to get in your way if you want to invoke it one way or another. Are you suggesting that we make a note about the possible differences in nc in the docs somewhere? If so, what exactly would you suggest? — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#19 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/Aii--vDhwA28TZxuhw96NGEJm1cWDw7Tks5uqgUzgaJpZM4YEqA1> .

[bradwood]

I agree... The brew-installed nc (netcat (The GNU Netcat) 0.7.1) doesn't support -U. So it requires some digging around to make this work... I haven't figured this out yet, and will let you know once I do, but it would be nice to update the readme at least.

[bradwood]

I ended up going with socat - unix-client:/Users/brad/.clipper.sock as gnu nc doesn't talk to Unix domain sockets from what I can tell and socat is brew-installable.

Now off to check vim-clipper...

[wincent]

As you will have seen, vim-clipper is making some assumptions about netcat:

https://github.com/wincent/vim-clipper/blob/35d15d7a096db63f1afce36f3dc1ae28dde4da98/autoload/clipper/private.vim#L5-L13

Namely, it invokes it as nc $ADDRESS $PORT if a port is supplied, and nc -U $SOCKET otherwise. Doesn't work at all if no nc available. Evidently needs to be made more configurable.

[wincent]

I added some notes to the docs which should be a good start. Please feel free to hit the edit button and create a PR if you can think of any further improvements.