Can I use netcat to read data from a serial port?

Question

We routinely use netcat (nc) to read data from UDP ports. For example:

user@host ~$ nc -luv 57303
Listening on [0.0.0.0] (family 0, port 57303)
NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:56.326365 DPS112 $GPZDA,121003.35,05,12,2024,,*63NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:56.422294 DPS112 $GPGGA,121003.00,3251.764736,N,07957.683827,W,2,12,0.8,21.38,M,-32.34,M,11.0,1007*72NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:56.470322 DPS112 $GPGLL,3251.764736,N,07957.683827,W,121003.00,A,D*71NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:56.518252 DPS112 $GPVTG,292.37,T,,M,0.0,N,0.0,K,A*30NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:57.302279 DPS112 $GPZDA,121004.33,05,12,2024,,*62NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:57.398194 DPS112 $GPGGA,121004.00,3251.764735,N,07957.683825,W,2,12,0.8,21.38,M,-32.34,M,12.0,1007*77NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:57.446220 DPS112 $GPGLL,3251.764735,N,07957.683825,W,121004.00,A,D*77NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:57.478284 DPS112 $GPVTG,63.00,T,,M,0.0,N,0.0,K,A*08NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:58.310157 DPS112 $GPZDA,121005.33,05,12,2024,,*63NAV 2024/12/05 12:09:58.390253 DPS112 $GPGGA,121005.00,3251.764738,N,07957.683824,W,2,12,0.8,21.37,M,-32.34,M,13.0,1007*74^C

Is it possible to do the same with a serial port, e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0? So far I haven't seen the appropriate options to do this, ending up with errors like this one:

user@host:~/tmp$ nc -lv 127.0.0.1:/dev/ttyUSB0
nc: getaddrinfo: Servname not supported for ai_socktype
user@host:~/tmp$ nc -lv 127.0.0.1:ttyUSB0
nc: getaddrinfo: Servname not supported for ai_socktype

This is on an Ubuntu installation.

Answer 1

Serial ports are not network ports, despite the similarity in name.

To read from a local device such as /dev/ttyUSB0, use regular cat.