Exploring Expect: A Tcl-based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs (Nutshell Handbooks) (Paperback)

by Don Libes (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Written by the author of Expect, this is the first book to explain how this part of the UNIX toolbox can be used to automate Telnet, FTP, passwd, rlogin, and hundreds of other interactive applications. Based on Tcl (Tool Command Language), Expect lets you automate interactive applications that have previously been extremely difficult to handle with any scripting language. The book briefly describes Tcl and how Expect relates to it. It then describes the Expect language, using a combination of reference material and specific, useful examples of its features. It shows how to use Expect in background, in multiple processes, and with standard languages and tools like C, C++, and Tk, the X-based extension to Tcl. The strength in the book is in its scripts, conveniently listed in a separate index.

From the Publisher
Expect is quickly becoming a part of every UNIX user's toolbox. It allows you to automate Telnet, FTP, passwd, rlogin, and hundreds of other applications that normally require human interaction. Using Expect to automate these applications will allow you to speed up tasks and, in many cases, solve new problems that you never would have even considered before. For example, you can use Expect to test interactive programs with no changes to their interfaces. Or wrap interactive programs with Motif-like front-ends to control applications by buttons, scrollbars, and other graphic elements with no recompilation of the original programs. You don't even need the source code! Expect works with remote applications, too. Use it to tie together Internet applications including Telnet, Archie, FTP, Gopher, and Mosaic. Don Libes is the creator of Expect as well as the author of this book. In Exploring Expect, he provides a comprehensive tutorial on all of Expect's features, allowing you to put it immediately to work on your problems. In a down-to-earth and humorous style, he provides numerous examples of challenging real-world applications and how they can be automated using Expect to save you time and money. Expect is the first of a new breed of programs based on Tcl, the Tool Command Language that is rocking the computer science community. This book provides an introduction to Tcl and describes how Expect applies Tcl's power to the new field of interaction automation. Whether your interest is in Expect or interaction automation or you simply want to learn about Tcl and see how it has been used in real software, you will find Exploring Expect a treasure trove of easy-to-understand and valuable information.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 602 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 1st edition (December 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565920902
• ISBN-13: 978-1565920903
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #64,544 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A completely different tool, July 17, 2000

By	Steve Wainstead (Jackson Heights, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Expect is completely unlike any other tool I have ever used. Think of any language you've used and how long it would take to: write a program that can update 1000 user passwords on 20 different machines; make two chess programs play each other; connect two users to the same shell program and type at the same time; allow you to rewrite the command arguments to any command line tool?

Expect really does make all these things trivial. It takes a lot of patience to master this tool though; Tcl is a very unforgiving and terse language. I've done things in Expect that I never thought were possible: I scripted Minicom (a modem term program that uses ncurses) to answer a phone after 7 seconds, and either: receive a zmodem file or send a login prompt. Then hang up the modem and wait again. Try that in a shell or systems language!

It's unfortunate that Expect is such a radically different beast and takes so long to understand; every person running regression tests or doing systems administration will benefit from this book. While it may not be great for just "looking up" things, search Usenet for all of the author's posts (comp.lang.tcl) and his answer is almost always, "This is on page XXX of the book." Because the book really does cover everything Expect does!

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wish all books were this well-written, April 14, 2000

By	[e-mail] (Cupertino, CA) - See all my reviews

This book is terrific. Libes writes very smoothly. Everything is answered and just at the right time - whenever I was wondering about a point, I would turn the page and find my question to be the next topic covered!

I really thought Expect was a simple-minded thing. Then I had a question about how to do something. I was bemoaning my problem one day when a coworker thrust this book into my hand and said "Read it!" Wow - not only did it have my exact scenario as an example but now I see Expect can do so many more cool things. I originally thought Expect was just good for telnet. But Libes shows examples applying it to all sorts of other programs. The breadth of the examples alone is incredible. It's obvious that Libes has really been around and poured all his wisdom and experience into this book.

I also liked the special command and variable index (the book calls it "Appendix") which is a 2nd index that takes you directly to where each command and option and variable is definitively described. There is also a third index of just the examples - some of them are useful in their own right (apart from demonstrating some concept). Between these and the regular index, it is always easy to find things later.

I wish all tech books were written this well.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No alternatives, December 29, 2000

By	Ruslan Moskalenko (Lafayette, CA United States) - See all my reviews

When I discovered Perl I though it's a quick and dirty way to automate admin tasks. I was wrong. The really quick and dirty way is Expect. Expect works like Helpdesk hotline. You call them and they ask you what you see and tell you what you should type. Sometimes you just have no alternatives especially if you're short on time. But the language is pretty tricky (e.g. if you want to look for '$' in regexp, you should use '\\\$' pattern, etc) and I couldn't learn it using just examples included in the distribution package. Then I spent some time searching for the good tutorial and this book was the best I found. Expect is surprisingly poorly documented and I didn't find any other books about it. There are some articles in the Internet, but usually they don't give you the whole picture. This book includes many examples, easy stuff in the beginning to get you started and very advanced in the end. That's everything you need to learn expect and it's written pretty friendly. In some places it's very informal but not too much.