Telnet is not the best thing to use when talking to non-telnet servers since it's not a raw protocol that just passes data back and forth. For example, telnet appends an ASCII NUL to any CR in the stream. Netcat gives a truly raw socket.

Thanks, good to know.

compare:

    $ telnet www.example.com 80
    Trying 192.0.43.10...
    Connected to www.example.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    GET / HTTP/1.1
    Host: www.example.com
    
    HTTP/1.0 302 Found
    Location: http://www.iana.org/domains/example/
    Server: BigIP
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Content-Length: 0

    ^]
    telnet> quit
    Connection closed.
    $

with:

    $ curl -i www.example.com
    HTTP/1.0 302 Found
    Location: http://www.iana.org/domains/example/
    Server: BigIP
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Content-Length: 0

    $

- Real men type less and do more.

Of course. Abstraction is important and powerful, and the right tool for the right job etc etc. But that still means there's a certain thrill in submitting HTTP POSTs via magnetized needle.