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Exploring Expect A Tcl-based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs

By Don Libes
December 1994
Pages: 602
ISBN 10: 1-56592-090-2 | ISBN 13: 9781565920903
(Average of 4 Customer Reviews)

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.
Full Description

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.

Featured customer reviews

Good book, but too little too late for me, August 25 2006

Rating:

Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

I purchased this book because it is the *only* good reference for expect. One cannot understand and write this language successfully without this book. However, it took over four months to recieve the book after paying for it, and I found that the book itself was almost ten years old! Some of the code is now out of date, links are broken, and there is n way to download the code from the book. What I needed, several months ago, was an up-to-date solution from this book on the night that I ordered it. Any programming language that will survive will provide a way to get that information. Expect is clearly stagnant.

Great Reference!, August 13 2005

Rating:

Submitted by Russell Chapman [Respond | View]

Written by the author of the program, this book is exactly what I expected, and more.

If you enjoy automating tasks and writing scripts, Expect is a great addition to your toolbox, and this book is a great companion and welcome addition to your reference shelf.

In performing many UNIX administration tasks, one which my current job allowed me the opportunity to automate is a means of maintaining passwords on many servers. In particular, we have a requirement to change root's password on some 1600+ servers monthly, as well as our own passwords on hundreds of servers. We have every flavor of UNIX and more variations of what to expect interacting with ssh, telnet, Sun, HP, Linux, AIX, NCR, and as many differences among the system prompts. After buying this book, I found much of my learning curve easier. The examples and the overview of Tcl are priceless.

The Expect man pages are good, but having this book handy, with the program author's colorful and descriptive explanations has been a great help in the above and other successful tools using Expect.

This may seem as much a rave of Expect as well as this book, but as a fan of both and a person who prefers a good reference manual, Exploring Expect earns my recommendation.

not for beginners, August 08 2005

Rating:

Submitted by tjotjobina [Respond | View]

I have tried using this book to learn expect and are failed. Have given up learning expect since it seems there is no other book about expect. like a gentle introduction to expect. if u are a beginner dont bother with this

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Exploring Expect Review, October 11 2000

Rating:

Submitted by Michael Chelomanov [Respond | View]

I much appreciate the author's efforts in writing such a wonderfull program but speaking about the book... I found it to be a bit hard to follow. The systemization in introducing this technology leaves much to be desired.

Most of the O'Reilly books you can literally can start reading and actually using them without of any prior experience in whatever the subject is, unfortunately it does not apply to the Exploring Expect book.

For example right now I need to find out how to programm cursor movemets via expect in order to navigate menu driven telnet interface, and quess what - the only mentioning of the arrows is on page 286, which asks me to write code, which will do it. SO I an surfing the WWW for the answer. I would think that would be quite common question, but for some reason it is not answered in the book.

Having said all above it is still a-must-to-have for any unix sysadmin it's O'Reilly book after all.

Media reviews "As with all good languages, as far back as FORTRANIV and SNOBOL, Expect's justified popularity is partly driven by a first-rate book, in this case Don Libes' Exploring Expect." --Jeffrey Copeland and Jeffrey Haemer, Server/Workstation Expert, June 2001

"Expect was the first widely used Tcl application, and it is still one of the most popular. This is a must-know tool for system administrators and many others." --John Ousterhout, John.Ousterhout@Eng.Sun.COM

"Expect is an absolutely wonderful, marvelous program. It is one of the most useful tools I've seen in 15+ years of UNIX hacking. Expect is going to save us several thousand dollars in licensing fees in the next year alone, some inestimable number of programming hours, and allow us to provide our users much better service than we otherwise could have." --John W. Pierce, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego

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