gnupic@linuxhacker.org

This might be a stupid question, but I don't have the answer so.
How do you output from the terminal to a serial port in linux?
Do you cat and or pipe to /dev/ttyS*?
And how do you receive from the same port to the terminal?
I have looked on the web and found a ton of stuff but it is all overkill for 
what I want to do. I just want to test serial communications to a pic to test 
the hardware. Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Wayne