Summary: Allow ports with dashes in the human-readable name to be
         specified as such rather than attempting to parse them as
         ranges.
Contributor: Mike Sullivan <msully4321@gmail.com>

Index: netcat-1.10/netcat.c
===================================================================
--- netcat-1.10.orig/netcat.c	2008-02-25 19:01:50.000000000 -0500
+++ netcat-1.10/netcat.c	2008-06-19 16:46:19.000000000 -0400
@@ -1360,6 +1360,28 @@
   return (0);
 } /* readwrite */
 
+/* unescape :
+   translate \-'s into -'s, returns start */
+char * unescape(start)
+     char * start;
+{
+  char * end;
+  char * next;
+  char * p;
+
+  end = start + strlen(start);
+  next = start;
+
+  while (next = strstr (next+1, "\\-")) {
+    p = next;
+    while (p < end) /* copy string back one char, overwriting backslash */
+      *(p++) = *(p+1);
+    end--;
+  }
+
+  return start;
+} /* unescape */
+
 /* main :
    now we pull it all together... */
 main (argc, argv)
@@ -1627,13 +1649,21 @@
    argument, so we can control the pattern somewhat. */
   while (argv[optind]) {
     hiport = loport = 0;
+    /* I know it's ugly to have this test twice, but I'd rather not have
+       it do all of the dash code if there aren't any dashes at all */
     cp = strchr (argv[optind], '-');	/* nn-mm range? */
     if (cp) {
-      *cp = '\0';
-      cp++;
-      hiport = getportpoop (cp, 0);
-      if (hiport == 0)
-	bail ("invalid port %s", cp);
+      while (cp && *(cp-1) == '\\') /* if dash escaped by backslash */
+        cp = strchr (cp+1, '-');
+
+      if (cp) { /* it's a range */
+        *cp = '\0';
+        unescape(++cp); /* turn \-'s into -'s */
+        hiport = getportpoop (cp, 0);
+        if (hiport == 0)
+          bail ("invalid port %s", cp);
+      }
+      unescape(argv[optind]); /* turn \-'s into -'s */
     } /* if found a dash */
     loport = getportpoop (argv[optind], 0);
     if (loport == 0)
@@ -1746,7 +1776,8 @@
 	-v			verbose [use twice to be more verbose]\n\
 	-w secs			timeout for connects and final net reads\n\
 	-z			zero-I/O mode [used for scanning]");
-  bail ("port numbers can be individual or ranges: lo-hi [inclusive]");
+  bail ("port numbers can be individual or ranges: lo-hi [inclusive];\n\
+hyphens in port names must be backslash escaped (e.g. 'ftp\\-data').");
 } /* helpme */
 #endif /* HAVE_HELP */