Exploring Expect

Obtaining Expect and the Examples

Expect may already be installed on your system, typically in /usr/local/bin. If you cannot find Expect, ask your system administrator. If you do not have a system administrator, you can obtain Expect by following the instructions below. Expect requires no special permissions to install, nor does it have to be installed in any particular place. You can even try it out in your own directory.

Expect includes a number of examples, several of which are useful as tools in their own right. Indeed, quite a few have man pages of their own and can be installed along with Expect. If the examples are not installed, you can find them in the example directory of the Expect distribution. Ask your local system administrator where the distribution is.

The examples provided with Expect are subject to change, but below is a list of just a few of the examples. The README file in the example directory contains a complete list as well as full explanations about each of the examples:

Example 1-1. 

chess.exp	play one chess game against another
dislocate	allow disconnection from and reconnection to background processes
dvorak	emulate a Dvorak keyboard
ftp-rfc	retrieve an RFC from the Internet via anonymous ftp
kibitz	let several people control a program at the same time for remote assistance, group editing, etc.
lpunlock	unhang a printer waiting for a lock
mkpasswd	generate a good random password and optionally run passwd with it
passmass	set a password on many machines simultaneously
rftp ...