Exploring Expect: A Tcl-based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs (Nutshell Handbooks) 1st Edition

by Don Libes (Author)

63 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1565920903

ISBN-10: 9781565920903

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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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Editorial Reviews

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.

About the Author

Don Libes is married to Susan Mulroney, a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Sue performs research in the area of kidney growth and development. Their well-hydrated daughter, Kenna, has two lovely kidneys.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1565920902
Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (December 27, 1994)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 606 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781565920903
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1565920903
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.07 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1.3 x 9.19 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,155,245 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #337 in Unix Operating System
- #690 in Computer Operating Systems (Books)
- #704 in Linux Operating System

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63 ratings

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Burt Silverman

Basic working knowledge of Expect is hidden in remote corners of this book.

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2018

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Don Libes's book put me in a bad mood, so I will be tough on him and only give 2 stars, although I debate with myself whether 2 or 3 is appropriate. In any case, I look at the current average of the reviews and I see 4 stars, and I think that is too generous. I do not want to base my review on the fact that the book made me sleepy, because that may be more a statement about me than the book. My beef is the author's inability to be a great pedagogue. He has hidden some fundamental information in a later part of the book that would appear at first to be for advanced users. And he has written that section with the lack of clarity that other reviewers have complained about. "Sending Without Echoing" is in Chapter 12 "Send," on page 273.

The general problem occurs when a send command is followed by an expect command. The normal echoing of the command sent will be processed by the expect command. This is not an issue in the simplest of examples, and the simplest of examples is all that one finds in the first 160 pages of the book. I ran into an issue when I had send followed by expect and my expect pattern was a regular expression. I contend that this problem should be highlighted BOLDLY at least by the end of the chapter on Regular Expressions. And probably in the preceding chapter on Glob Patterns. But again, the few examples of send followed by expect in the RE chapter do not highlight my issue.

Typically, an index, and I have not gotten much pleasure from the index in this book, is not a solution for this because one would not know what to search for when the problem strikes. Only having basic information in the basic part of the book is a solution. The author simply was not born to be a great teacher, despite his otherwise formidable credentials.

5 people found this helpful

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Michael Ernest

Powerful tool, painful book

Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2008

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I picked up Exploring Expect: A Tcl-based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs (Nutshell Handbooks) to get started on a regression-testing framework for common Unix programs. I was also very curious to see how Tcl was used to make this tool.

To those ends, I wasn't disappointed. Expect makes it possible to automate tedious interactive work at the interface level. One can write concise, if not elegant, scripts. The cost of brevity, as if often the case with tools of this sort, is directly proportional to one's ignorance of expect's features and how they are implemented. And, if you'd like to approach Tcl by way of example, expect is as good a choice as I've come across.

This guide, on the other hand, is often a discouraging chore to read. It's as if a shoebox of index cards, each detailing one specific feature, was sorted through and applied to flesh out the book's outline. Taken individually, these elements do make sense, providing sometimes useful examples, sometimes curious tangents, sometimes tedious cautionary tales of edge cases. Taken as a whole, it's difficult to see the forest for the trees in this guide. One could say this book is good reference material; it is indexed well, and the outline is clear enough. If it had a reference style, I could see that point.

The book however has an expository form. It employs inline cross-references and footnotes where a sidebar or a simple table would have been a welcome relief from flipping back and forth. These research-style choices enforce the idea that the book was assembled from notes, and never quite realized as a whole guide. As a result, it's closer in feel to a set of anecdotes than a reference guide. It is a style that, as an instructor, I find often discourages users, primarily beginners or others who do not have a formal technical education.

Expect is of course a valuable tool. I'm grateful to the author for making it and sharing it. I'm also surprised, however, that in the last 15 years no one has thought they could do a better job in explaining, and therefore promoting, such a useful application.

5 people found this helpful

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VERY well written-- must have for your Unix toolbox.

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2013

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I've been using this book for over 13 years, and it's still current, still very useful. My only issue is that the author needs to port it to more languages. I'd love to see a Don Libes version of Expect not only for TCL, but for Ruby, Python, and even the new Go (from google).

THe best thing about expect is that instead of just firing off commands via shell script, it can interact with those commands. For example if you write a script that uses SSH, SSH can give you multiple different responses asking for passphrase, password, accept public key from server. Expect can work like a switch statement to handle all of these:

expect {
-re "\[P|p]assword" {
send "$passwd\r"
exp_continue
}
"Are you sure you want to continue connecting" {
send "yes\r"
}
-re "\[P|p]assphrase" {
send "$passphrase\r"
exp_continue
-re $prompt
}

Very simple.

3 people found this helpful

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Robert S. Truesdell

Good examples, good index, good explanations

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 1998

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This book, along with Ousterhout and Sun's references on the www, comprise the triolgy that is jump-starting my learning tcl. I find the index compete and easy to use and I frequently jump all around the book gleaning little nuggets of information. I am also concurrently reading it cover-to-cover because I like Libes's style -- the way he throws in his programming phylosophy with his examples so you can see why he's doing something a certain way.
I like how the author addresses issues of portability without obsessing on it.
I really like the Exercises at the end of each chapter. I only wish the author would apply a difficulty rating to each exercise because sometimes I can't tell if an exercise is intrinsically very difficult (some are definitely so) or if I need to review parts of the chapter to see why I can't just instantly 'get it.' In any event, the exercises are stimulating and would require a long time and careful thought to do them all. I would buy a book that had the answers, with commentary, to all the exercises.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

usman

Aimed at programmers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2021

Verified Purchase

I am a dabbler not a programmer so found this a little esoteric in places. Authors style of writing takes some getting used to, but on the whole very useful if you want to use Expect. Just be ready to read & re-read and read again to make sure you have understood.!

N Gregory

Enjoyed reading and learned a lot

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2014

Verified Purchase

I had a few admin inteactive tasks to automate and found Expect via Google. I didn't like the online tutorials and some articles had recommended this book. I took a chance as it has had a few low stars. Glad I did. I found the style easy to read, the information easy to get at and the more complex examples a great place to inspire my attempts to be more sophisticated than a quick knock-up. My programs error check and log which I'm really pleased with. Well worth the cash.

G. N. M. Hughes

Great Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2010

Verified Purchase

In these days of event driven windows programming - this book may seem a little out-dated.
The tcl/expect utility can stil be relevant - and I learnt much about TCL, Expect and regular expressions since buying this book. Well written with good humour.

Michael Smith

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 20, 2015

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If you're using Expect, then this book is a must. Well-written, informative and comprehensive.

Peter Tick

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2014

Verified Purchase

Excellent.

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Exploring Expect: A Tcl-based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs (Nutshell Handbooks) 1st Edition

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