Linux ping a port using netcat

To check if a port is reachable on Linux

This is tested using nc version 7.50 (package nmap-ncat) on Amazon Linux.

nc -vz localhost 22
Connection to localhost 22 port [tcp/ssh] succeeded!

On a higher version if you get ncat: invalid option — ‘z’ error, then use the following command

cat /dev/null | nc -v localhost 22