If you have bash, you can even partially get by without netcat as well. Bash has the wonderful "fake" devicenodes, /dev/tcp/host/port and /dev/udp/host/port.

If your system is running busybox you usually won't have full fat bash.

One thing that annoys me is how people will crack a quad core 1.6Ghz smartphone with 64Gb of storage and then install busybox to save those 50Mb over a regular shell environment that won't embarrass itself on every shell script or configure script.

It's easier to cross-compile busybox (or toybox) than Bash. Cross compiling for Linux is annoying, cross compiling for Android is even more annoying.

Agreed, I've clarified why I went with ftp and added a note with example usage of nc, thanks!

Indeed, the tools listing in that post makes clear that nc should be available. If you have another Unix machine elsewhere, the nc solution avoids having to install any new software on either machine.

Indeed! I meant to mention the nc option, but I've found that ftpput/get are more often available than nc, perhaps something to do with the ubiquity of ftp.

Much the other way around. Netcat is ubiquitous. I haven't come across many systems with ftpput and ftpget.

Neat challenge left as an exercise to the reader: whois can be used to transfer files too. :)

Interesting, we must be looking at a different class of devices. If we're going down that road, there's always base64 and copy + paste!

>whois can be used to transfer files too.

Ah, the old DNS-tunnelling trick. A fun way to flip cheap hotels the bird.