There's this excellent example of how to use netcat as a simple httpd server (link below) but when I attempted to recreate this I found my netcat doesn't have the -c (dash c) option available. Unfortunately the systems I must configure for testing are fairly restricted so I'm not able to compile a special netcat or whatever. I tried doing 'nc -k -l 555555 </tmp/foo' which prints "hello world" but this only prints the contents of the file for a single connection.

Can anyone offer an example like this that would work with my nc (nc-1.84-22)?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=828870

Get a different nc version that does have that option.

man nc for options.

Not all versions have all options. The -c is a string.

"c string
specify shell commands to exec after connect (use with caution). The string is passed to /bin/sh -c for execution. See the -e option if you don't have a working /bin/sh (Note that POSIX-conformant system must have one). "
http://pwet.fr/man/linux/commandes/nc