For my own purposes[1], I wrote these wrappers that abstract the differences between the two versions of nc that I had to deal with away:

https://github.com/pflanze/chj-bin/blob/master/netcat-get https://github.com/pflanze/chj-bin/blob/master/netcat-push https://github.com/pflanze/chj-bin/blob/master/netcat-receiv... https://github.com/pflanze/chj-bin/blob/master/netcat-serve-...

(They use 'have' from here: https://github.com/pflanze/chj-bin/blob/master/have )

[1] for example my way to transfer files between servers: https://github.com/pflanze/chj-bin/blob/master/netoffer (which depends on netfetch from the same place)