gawk can: https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawkinet/gawkinet.h...

I solved that problem some time ago with netcat, „coproc nc -l -p PORT“. Makes bash listen to nc‘s stdout and let’s it write to it‘s stdin.

But nc is not bash.

Here's my nc version, works on all shells:

https://gist.github.com/alganet/140c7c12d1603c244a01

nc is almost everywhere, you can count on it.

Ultimately, this is a toy, but it can be handy. I originally made it to attempt using for serving config for networked debian unattended installations[1] while automating VM creation, but never went that far.

[1]: https://debian-handbook.info/browse/en-US/stable/sect.automa...

You can't count on nc being installed but you can count on it being installable.

That's a problematic distinction in some situations.

There might be a way to create a listener using bash's /dev/tcp but I can't remember (I haven't used bash for decades)

edit:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/49936/dev-tcp-liste...

gives some pointers

For Bash with `--enable-net-redirections` set at configure time (not a default, not enabled on popular distros to my knowledge), `/dev/{udp,tcp}/$host/$port` is available for this purpose.

Does anyone know if there is a good reason to disable net-redirections?

Sure. It makes it incredibly easy to establish, for example, a reverse shell.

In a purpose-built environment there is practically no need for such a feature aside from mischief.