Tcl/Tk quick start - Free
Tcl/Tk quick start - Free
Tcl/Tk quick start - Free
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default.<br />
What you can do with Expect<br />
When your script invokes an interactive program, by default Expect intercepts all input and<br />
output (STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR). This allows Expect to search for patterns that<br />
match the output of the program, and send input to the spawned process to simulate user<br />
interaction. Additionally, Expect can pass control of a process to a user if so instructed, or<br />
take control back upon request.<br />
Not only do these traits make Expect remarkably useful for common administrative tasks, but<br />
it turns out that Expect is quite good for building test scripts to perform I/O validation during<br />
program development.<br />
Finally, there's the stunningly useful program, autoexpect. Itself an Expect script,<br />
autoexpect monitors a command line interactive program, generating an Expect script that<br />
replicates that interaction exactly. Now, while that usually isn't just what's needed, it is easy<br />
to take the results of several autoexpect sessions, generalize the expect patterns, then cut<br />
and paste them into the desired configuration. It's been written in more than one place that<br />
the best learning tool for Expect is to run autoexpect and play with the results.<br />
<strong>Tcl</strong>/<strong>Tk</strong> <strong>quick</strong> <strong>start</strong> Page 24 of 29
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