Exploring Expect

Using Expect With Other Programs

Most of the examples in this chapter use programs that are common to all UNIX systems. But Expect is not restricted to these programs. You can apply Expect to other programs. Even (gasp!) programs that you have written.

In the previous section, I described how you might automate ftp. But if you have a different program on your system to do file transfer, that’s fine. Expect can use it. Expect does not have a built-in mechanism for file transfer, remote login, rebooting your colleague’s workstation, or a million other useful things. Instead, Expect uses whatever local utilities you already have. This means that you do not have to learn a new file transfer protocol or a new host-to-host security system. If you use ".rhosts“, then that is what Expect will use when it does remote host operations. If you use Kerberos, then Expect will use that. And so on.