What happened to /dev/tcp? I mean you're not using unix sockets, but you can avoid the whole fifo <-> netcat <-> socket mess, by just doing: exec 3>/dev/tcp

What happened to /dev/tcp? I mean you're not using unix sockets, but you can avoid the whole fifo <-> netcat <-> socket mess, by just doing: exec 3>/dev/tcp/127.0.0.1/6001 #(first display) and then just using echo -n "something something" >&3 And if you want to disconnect: 3<&- Tools removed from the list: nc, mkfifo And I'd also do the "append_file" trick a little bit different: declare -a SEND_BUFFER=() SEND_BUFFER+=($'\x1') # create window command ID SEND_BUFFER+=($'\x0') # depth and so son. Bash has this special notation $'' that creates the escaped values when you use it (Check the "QUOTING" section in the man page). So echo -e "\n" is the same as echo $'\n' The difference is that you can add $'\n' to an array and then later do something like this: IFS="" echo "${SEND_BUFFER[*]}" unset IFS This will output SEND_BUFFER as a "string" w/o any additional spaces or other separators. So, this: declare -a foo=(a b c d e f) printed like this: IFS=""; echo "${foo[*]}"; unset IFS; turns into this: abcdef You could use associative arrays and then assign names to the values, but the order of the entries is not stored and so you'd require a function that would build the string needed. $0.02