Server script without built-in sockets

[Kurt Granroth]

Here's an esoteric question for those of you wanting a challenge.  How
can I turn an arbitrary non-networked bash script into a server?

Okay, I'll head a followup question off at the pass... "why would I want
to do something insane like turning a bash script into a network
server?"  The answer is "because".  Really, there's no reason other than
I want to :-P

Now netcat handily has the exact option that I need: -e.  With that, I
could do something like:

while 1; do netcat -l -p 16789 -e myscript.sh; done

Alas, the netcat people are reasonable and security conscious folk so
they prudently refuse to enable the -e option by default.  In fact, to
get that functionality, you must recompile netcat with the
-DGAPING_SECURITY_HOLE compile flag!  I love it :)

But that doesn't help me because the solution that *I* want would
require only software that I can reasonably assume would already be on
any Linux system (no compiling!).

I suppose I could write a couple line perl script to handle the incoming
connections... but it seems sacrilegious for a shell script to require
perl.  Plus, not all Linux systems have perl.

[x]inted would certainly fit the bill but using that requires root
access so that's out.

Am I out of luck, here?  Or is there some commonly available utility out
there that can open up a socket for me?

Kurt

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