Expect

* Download Expect source from SourceForge
* Download Expect binaries from ActiveState

* Expect Homepage

Expect is a tool for automating interactive applications such as telnet, ftp, passwd, fsck, rlogin, tip, etc. Expect really makes this stuff trivial. Expect is also useful for testing these same applications. And by adding Tk, you can wrap interactive applications in X11 GUIs.

Expect can make easy all sorts of tasks that are prohibitively difficult with anything else. You will find that Expect is an absolutely invaluable tool - using it, you will be able to automate tasks that you've never even thought of before - and you'll be able to do this automation quickly and easily.

Notable Publications

• Libes, D., "Expect," Tcl/Tk Extensions, ed, Mark Harrison, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1997.
• Libes, D., "Writing a Tcl Extension in Only ... 7 Years," Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop '97, Boston, MA, July 14-7, 1997. (Best Paper Award)
• Libes, D., "Tcl/Tk-based Agents for Mail and News Notification -- or -- A Tale of Two Biffs," Software - Practice & Experience, John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex, England, 1997.
  
• Libes, D., "Automation and Testing of Interactive Character Graphic Programs," Software - Practice and Experience, Vol. 27, No. 2, p 123-137, February 1997.
• Libes, D., "How to Avoid Learning Expect -- or -- Automating Automating Interactive Programs," Proceedings of the Tenth USENIX System Administration Conference (LISA X), Chicago, IL, September 30 - October 4, 1996.
• Libes, D., "Writing CGI Scripts in Tcl," Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop '96, Monterey, CA, July 10-13, 1996. (Best Presentation Award)
• Libes, D., "Terminal Emulation for Automation and Testing of Character Graphic Programs: A Code Walkthrough," Proceedings of The 21st Annual Trenton Computer Festival (TCF '96), Trenton, NJ, April 21-22, 1996.
• Libes, D., "Expect: A Power Tool for Systems Administration Automation," O'Reilly & Associates, 1995.
  
• Libes, D., "Handling Passwords with Security and Reliability in Background Processes," Proceedings of the 1994 USENIX LISA VIII Conference, San Diego, CA, September 19-23, 1994.
• Libes, D., "Ouch, Those Programs Are Painful," ORA.COM, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., December 1994.
• Libes, D., "A Debugger for Tcl Applications," Proceedings of the 1993 Tcl/Tk Workshop, Berkeley, CA, June 10-11, 1993.
• Libes, D., "X Wrappers for Non-Graphic Interactive Programs," Proceedings of Xhibition '94, San Jose, CA, June 20-24, 1994.
• Libes, D., "Kibitz - Connecting Multiple Interactive Programs Together," Software - Practice & Experience, Vol. 23, No. 5, May 1993.
• Libes, D., "Obfuscated C and Other Mysteries," Chapter 36 ("Expect"), John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-57805-3, January 1993.
• Libes, D., "Automating Interactive Applications in the Network Environment," International Communications Association Journal, May 1992.
• Libes, D., "Regression Testing and Conformance Testing Interactive Programs," Proceedings of the Summer 1992 USENIX Conference, San Antonio, TX, June 8-12, 1992.
• Libes, D., "Expect: Scripts for Controlling Interactive Processes," Computing Systems Vol. 4, No. 2, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1991.
  
• Libes, D., "Implementor's Notebook: Implementing a Trap Command," C Users Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3, R&D Publications, Lawrence, KS, March, 1991.
• Libes, D., "Implementor's Notebook: Expect," C Users Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, R&D Publications, Lawrence, KS, January 1991.
• Libes, D., "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.
• Libes, D., "Expect: Curing Those Uncontrollable Fits of Interaction," Proceedings of the Summer 1990 USENIX Conference, Anaheim, CA, June 11-15, 1990.