nc (netcat) on Mac OS X 10.8.4 gets stuck

Question

I encountered a little issue while using the nc utility on Mac OS X, a utility i often use as a quick and dirty solution to check if a port is open and what version the daem

Answer 1

I believe you are looking for the -G option. From the man pages:

-G conntimeout TCP connection timeout in seconds.

-w is used to set the timeout after connection. -G option is used to set the timeout before connection. This should give you what you want

nc -n -G 2 -v xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 22