Exploring Expect

Using Expect On UNIX

I have mentioned a number of UNIX programs that can be controlled by Expect. Expect can run any UNIX program, not just interactive ones. So you can invoke programs like cat or ls if you need them too.

Expect can do just about anything that any shell script can do. But that is not the point of Expect. Indeed, Expect scripts are meant to be small. By wrapping badly behaving programs with Expect scripts, you can use them from other scripting languages, such as the shell. The resulting scripts behave just like any UNIX program. Users have no way of knowing that the programs are just scripts.