Exploring Expect

Chapter 13. Spawn

Besides starting processes, spawn can be used to begin interactions with files and pipelines. In this chapter, I will go into detail on the spawn command. I will also cover ptys—what they are, how to control them, andtheir features and pitfalls.

The Search Path

The spawn command follows the “usual” rules in finding programs to invoke. Both relative and absolute filenames are acceptable. If a filename is specified with no directory at all, the value of the environment variable PATH is treated as a list of directories and each directory is searched until the given file is found. This searching is performed by the operating system and behaves identically to the way that programs are found from shells such as the Bourne shell and the C shell.

spawn /bin/passwd                            ;# absolute
spawn passwd                            ;# relative

In some cases, naming programs absolutely is a good idea. In other cases, relative names make more sense. If you do use relative names, it is a good idea to set PATH explicitly. For example:

set env(PATH) "/bin:/usr/bin"

Setting the path avoids the possibility of picking up local versions of utilities that users might otherwise have on their paths. Users at other sites may need to change the path, but the single definition at the top of a script makes the path easy to change.

While resetting the path is easy enough, there are circumstances when it makes more sense to refer to programs absolutely. For example, your system may have several versions of a utility (e.g., BSD, SV, POSIX, ...