My point being, grepping for "Host is up" doesn't fill the bill. You're saying what I said....just differently.

I still prefer tcping since there is no need to grep or awk anything. Or worry about text being changed in a later release. Just rely on exit status.

Ah I agree on tcping being more elegant there - and there's potential security arguments to be had surrounding nmap on user systems if they don't actually need it for a real purpose ;)

I suspect we both wrote messages the same time surrounding 'host is up'