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NOTE: ALPHA AND BETA RELEASES OF TCL/TK ARE NOT SUPPORTED!

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Introduction

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This is the README file for Expect, a program that performs programmed

dialogue with other interactive programs.  It is briefly described by

its man page, expect(1).  This directory contains the source and man

page for Expect.

This is Expect 5 for Tcl 7.5, 7.6, and 8.0.  Tk 4.1, 4.2, 8.0 and the

Tcl Debugger are also supported.  Significant changes and other news

can be found in the NEWS file.

The Expect home page is: http://expect.nist.gov

The Expect FAQ is:       http://expect.nist.gov/FAQ.html

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Getting Started - The Preferable Way

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A book on Expect is available from O'Reilly with the title "Exploring

Expect: A Tcl-Based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Applications",

ISBN 1-56592-090-2.

The book is filled with detailed examples and explanations, and is a

comprehensive tutorial to Expect.  The book also includes a tutorial

on Tcl written specifically for Expect users (so you don't have to

read the Expect papers, the debugger paper, Ousterhout's book, or the

man pages).  Exploring Expect is 602 pages.

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Getting Started - The Hacker Way

--------------------

While the book is the best way to learn about Expect, it is not

absolutely necessary.  There are man pages after all and there are

numerous articles and papers on Expect.  All of my own papers are in

the public domain and can be received free.  If you are a hacker on a

tight budget, this may appeal to you.  Nonetheless, I think you will

find the book pays for itself very quickly.  It is much more readable

than the man pages, it includes well-written and explained examples,

and it describes everything in the papers as a coherent whole.  The

concepts in the papers actually only make up a small fraction of the

book.

The 1990 USENIX paper (see "Readings" below) is probably the best one

for understanding Expect conceptually.  The 1991 Computing Systems and

the LISA IV papers provide a nice mix of examples.  The only downside

is, the examples in these papers don't actually work anymore - some

aspects (e.g., syntax) of both Expect and Tcl have changed.  The

papers still make interesting reading - just don't study the examples

too closely!  Fortunately, most of the examples from the papers also

accompany this distribution - and all of these are up to date.

For all the details, read the man page.  It is long but you can get

started just by skimming the sections on the following commands:

        spawn           (starts a process)

        send            (sends to a process)

        expect          (waits for output from a process)

        interact        (lets you interact with a process)

To print out the Expect man page, invoke your local troff using the

-man macros, such as either of:

                ptroff -man expect.man

                ditroff -man expect.man

If Expect is installed, you can read the man pages using the "usual"

man commands, such as "man expect".  If not installed, view the man

page on your screen by saying something like:

                nroff -man expect.man | more

Expect uses Tcl as the underlying language for expressing things such

as procedures, loops, file I/O, and arithmetic expressions.  For many

simple scripts, it is not necessary to learn about Tcl.  Just by

studying the examples, you will learn enough Tcl to get by.  But if

you would like to learn more about Tcl or use it in your own

applications, read the Tcl README file which provides pointers to the

extensive Tcl documentation.  Or read Exploring Expect.  Chapter 2 of

Exploring Expect is a Tcl tutorial specifically designed for Expect

users.

An interactive debugger is bundled with Expect.  The debugger has its

own documentation that comes separately.  It is listed in the Readings

below.  Again, it is slightly out of date.  An up-to-date description

of the debugger appears in Chapter 18 of Exploring Expect.  This

chapter also contains additional advice and tips for debugging.

You may get the feeling that the Expect documentation is somewhat

scattered and disorganized.  This was true prior to publication of

Exploring Expect.  The book contains everything you need to know, all

up-to-date, and with examples of every concept.  (The book contains no

references to any of the Expect papers because none are necessary.)

----------------------

Examples

----------------------

This distribution contains many example scripts.  (All of the

substantive examples in the book are included.)  They can be found in

the example directory of this distribution.  The README file in that

directory briefly describes all of the example scripts.  Many of the

more sophisticated examples have man pages of their own.

Other interesting scripts are available separately in the directory

http://expect.nist.gov/scripts/ (ftpable as

ftp://ftp.nist.gov/mel/div826/subject/expect/scripts).  (See below for

how to retrieve these.)  You are welcome to send me scripts to add to

this directory.  A number of Expect scripts are also available in the

Tcl archive, available at ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/pub/tcl.

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Readings on Expect

--------------------

The implementation, philosophy, and design are discussed in "expect:

Curing Those Uncontrollable Fits of Interaction", Proceedings of the

Summer 1990 USENIX Conference, Anaheim, CA, June 11-15, 1990.

Examples and discussion, specifically aimed at system administrators,

are in "Using expect to Automate System Administration Tasks",

Proceedings of the 1990 USENIX Large Systems Administration Conference

(LISA) IV, Colorado Springs, CO, October 17-19, 1990.

A comprehensive paper of example scripts is "expect: Scripts for

Controlling Interactive Programs", Computing Systems, Vol. 4, No. 2,

University of California Press Journals, 1991.

Regression and conformance testing is discussed in "Regression Testing

and Conformance Testing Interactive Programs", Proceedings of the

Summer 1992 USENIX Conference, San Antonio, TX, June 8-12, 1992.

An explanation of some of the more interesting source code to an early

version of Expect is in Chapter 36 ("Expect") of "Obfuscated C and

Other Mysteries", John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-57805-3, January 1993.

A paper on connecting multiple interactive programs together using

Expect is "Kibitz - Connecting Multiple Interactive Programs

Together", Software - Practice & Experience, Vol. 23, No. 5, May 1993.

The debugger is discussed in "A Debugger for Tcl Applications",

Proceedings of the 1993 Tcl/Tk Workshop, Berkeley, CA, June 10-11,

1993.

Using Expect with Tk is described in the paper "X Wrappers for

Non-Graphic Interactive Programs", Proceedings of Xhibition '94, San

Jose, CA, June 20-24, 1994.

Simple techniques to allow secure handling of passwords in background

processes are covered in "Handling Passwords with Security and

Reliability in Background Processes", Proceedings of the 1994 USENIX

LISA VIII Conference, San Diego, CA, September 19-23, 1994.

More publications can be found in the Expect home page (see elsewhere).

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How to Get the Latest Version of Expect or the Readings

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Expect may be ftp'd as mel/div826/subject/expect/expect.tar.gz from

expect.nist.gov.  (Yes, the URL is much shorter:

http://expect.nist.gov/expect.tar.Z) Request email delivery by mailing

to "library@cme.nist.gov".  The contents of the message should be (no

subject line) "send pub/expect/expect.tar.Z".

Once you have retrieved the system, read the INSTALL file.  The papers

mentioned above can be retrieved separately (from the same directories

listed above) as:

 doc/seminal.ps.Z         (USENIX '90 - Intro and Implementation)

 doc/sysadm.ps.Z            (LISA '90 - System Administration)

 doc/scripts.ps.Z  (Comp. Systems '91 - Overview of Scripts)

 doc/regress.ps.Z         (USENIX '92 - Testing)

 doc/kibitz.ps.Z            (SP&E '93 - Automating Multiple

                                        Interactive Programs Simultaneously)

 doc/tcl-debug.ps.Z       (Tcl/Tk '93 - Tcl/Tk Debugger)

 doc/expectk.ps.Z      (Xhibition '94 - Using Expect with Tk)

 doc/bgpasswd.ps.Z          (LISA '94 - Passwds in Background Procs)

 doc/chargraph.ps.Z         (SP&E '96 - Testing and Automation

                                        of Character Graphic Applications)

The book "Exploring Expect" is described in more detail earlier in

this file.

The book "Obfuscated C and Other Mysteries" is not on-line but is

available in bookstores or directly from the publisher (Wiley).

Overhead transparencies I've used at conferences are also available in

the same way as the papers themselves.  The transparencies are sketchy

and not meant for personal education - however if you are familiar

with Expect and just want to give a short talk on it to your

colleagues, you may find the transparencies useful.  They vary in

length from 15 to 20 minutes in length.  These are:

  doc/seminal-talk.ps.Z    (USENIX '90 - Intro and Implementation)

  doc/sysadm-talk.ps.Z       (LISA '90 - System Administration)

  doc/regress-talk.ps.Z    (USENIX '92 - Testing)

  doc/tcl-debug-talk.ps.Z  (Tcl/Tk '93 - Tcl/Tk Debugger)

  doc/expectk-talk.ps.Z (Xhibition '94 - Expect + Tk = Expectk)

  doc/bgpasswd-talk.ps.Z     (LISA '94 - Passwords in the Background)

All of the documents are compressed PostScript files and should be

uncompressed and sent to a PostScript printer.  The documents are

intended for printing at 8.5"x11" and may fail on some ISO A4

printers.  According to Hans Mayer , you can make

them A4-able by searching for "FMVERSION" and changing the next line

from:

        1 1 0 0 612 792 0 1 13 FMDOCUMENT

to:

        1 1 0 0 594 841 0 1 13 FMDOCUMENT

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Using Expect with and without Tcl and/or Tk.

--------------------

The usual way of using Expect is as a standalone program with Tcl as

the control language.  Since you may already have Tcl, it is available

separately.  Tcl may be retrieved as tcl.tar.Z in the same way as

described above for Expect.  When new releases of Tcl appear, I will

try to check them out for Expect as soon as possible.  If you would

like to get the newest Tcl release without waiting, ftp it from

ftp.smli.com (directory pub/tcl).

Expect may also be built using the Tk library, a Tcl interface to the

X Window System.  Tk is available in the same way as Tcl.

It is possible to embed the Expect/Tcl core and optionally Tk in your

own C programs.  This is described in libexpect(3).

Expect can also be used from a C or C++ program without Tcl.  This is

described in libexpect(3).  While I consider this library to be easy

to use, the standalone Expect program is much, much easier to use than

working with the C compiler and its usual edit, compile, debug cycle.

Unlike typical programming, most of the debugging isn't getting the C

compiler to accept your programs - rather, it is getting the dialogue

correct.  Also, translating scripts from Expect to C is usually not

necessary.  For example, the speed of interactive dialogues is

virtually never an issue.  So please try 'expect' first.  It is a more

appropriate tool than the library for most people.

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Systems Supported

--------------------

I do not know of any UNIX systems on which Expect will not run.

Systems which do not support select or poll can use Expect, but

without the ability to run multiple processes simultaneously.  I am

willing to work with you to complete a port.

Before sending me changes, please download or verify that you have the

latest version of Expect (see above).  Then send me a "diff -c" along

with a suitable English explanation.  If your diff involves something

specific to a machine, give me diffs for configure.in as well or give

me a hint about when the diffs should be done so I can write the

configure support myself.  Also please include the version of the OS

and whether it is beta, current, recent, or totally out-of-date and

unsupported.

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Installing Expect

--------------------

Expect comes with a configure script that provides for an automated

installation.  I believe you will find that Expect is very easy to

install.  (Tcl and Tk, too.)

For more information, read the INSTALL file.

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Support from Don Libes or NIST

--------------------

Although I can't promise anything in the way of support, I'd be

interested to hear about your experiences using it (good or bad).  I'm

also interested in hearing bug reports and suggestions for improvement

even though I can't promise to implement them.

If you send me a bug, fix, or question, include the version of Expect

(as reported by expect -d), version of Tcl, and name and version of

the OS that you are using.  Before sending mail, it may be helpful to

verify that your problem still exists in the latest version.  You can

check on the current release and whether it addresses your problems by

retrieving the latest HISTORY file (see "History" above).

Awards, love letters, and bug reports may be sent to:

Don Libes

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Bldg 220, Rm A-127

Gaithersburg, MD  20899

(301) 975-3535

libes@nist.gov

I hereby place this software in the public domain.  NIST and I would

appreciate credit if this program or parts of it are used.

Design and implementation of this program was funded primarily by

myself.  Funding contributors include the NIST Automated Manufacturing

Research Facility (funded by the Navy Manufacturing Technology

Program), the NIST Scientific and Technical Research Services, the

ARPA Persistent Object Bases project and the Computer-aided

Acquisition and the Logistic Support (CALS) program of the Office of

the Secretary of Defense.

Especially signicant contributions were made by John Ousterhout, Henry

Spencer, and Rob Savoye.  See the HISTORY file for others.

--------------------

Support for Don Libes or NIST

--------------------

NIST accepts external funding and other resources (hardware, software,

and personnel).  This can be a fine way to work more closely with NIST

and encourage particular areas of research.

Funding can be earmarked for specific purposes or for less-specific

purposes.  For example, if you simply like the work I do, you can

contribute directly to my funding which will reduce the amount of time

I have to spend writing proposals and submitting them to other people

for funding on my own.

I can also participate in the NIST Fellows program allowing me to

spend several months to a year working directly with your company and

potentially even at your location.  I am also interested in returning

to an academic program.  I presently have an MS and am hunting for

Ph.D. topics and advisors.  Let me know if you have ideas or are

interested in being my advisor.

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Commercial Support, Classes

--------------------

Several companies provide commercial support for Expect.  If your

company has a financial investment in Expect or you wish to be assured

of continuing support for Expect, you can buy a support contract this

way.  These companies currently include:

Cygnus Support

1937 Landings Drive

Mountain View, CA  94043

+1 (415) 903-1400

info@cygnus.com

http://www.cygnus.com

Computerized Processes Unlimited (CPU)

4200 S. I-10 Service Rd., Suite 205

Metairie, LA  70006

+1 (504) 889-2784

info@cpu.com

http://www.cpu.com

http://www.cpu.com/cpu/expect.htm (Expect class page)

CPU provides Expect support and also Expect classes.  Contact them for

more information.

Neither NIST nor I have any financial relationship with these

companies.