Exploring expect

What Hacker News says

1. bchJun 2017
   For those seeing "Expect" and not knowing what's going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expect

   One of Tcl's first "killer apps". Don Libes' (creator of Expect) book "Exploring Expect" is also one of those technical masterpieces that are very enjoyable, entertaining technical reads. Recommended if only for the discussions of terminals and interactive i/o.

   [edit: typo/punctuation]

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2. michaelsbradleyDec 2016
   Don Libes' Exploring Expect[1] is a devops classic (if there is such a thing). It would be nice if O'Reilly would make the text (completely) freely accessible[2], as they have done with some of their other older titles[3].

   See also the Caius framework[4].

   [1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565920903.do

   [2] https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/exploring-exp...

   [3] http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/

   [4] http://caiusproject.com/

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3. michaelsbradleyJul 2016
   Don Libes' Exploring Expect[1] is a devops classic (if there is such a thing). Highly recommended for those wondering what Tcl is (still) good for! It would be nice if O'Reilly would make the text (completely) freely accessible[2], as they have done with some their other older titles[3].

   See also the Caius framework[4].

   [1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565920903.do

   [&] http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/expect.cfm

   [2] https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/exploring-exp...

   [3] http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/

   [4] http://caiusproject.com/

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4. michaelsbradleyAug 2015
   Expect is still pretty nice:

   http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/expect.cfm

   Exploring Expect by Don Libes, the principal author of Expect, is a classic among tech books:

   http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565920903.do

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5. michaelsbradleyFeb 2015
   I started with Don Libes' classic book on Tcl/Expect[1] and am moving on to the 3rd edition of Clif Flynt's book[2].

   Someone in #tcl on Freenode suggested that this set of essays would be a good resource for exploring some of the new/er features in Tcl.

   I'm experimenting with using Tcl as a basis for rapid prototyping and testing[4] of services and service compositions built with docker and docker-compose[5].

   It would be awesome if O'Reilly would consider making Exploring Expect[1] an Open Book[3] – it's an "oldie but goodie"!

   [1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565920903.do

   [2] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780123847171.do

   [3] http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/

   [4] http://caiusproject.com/

   [5] https://github.com/docker/compose

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6. mzsNov 2022
   from the expect FAQ, of which unbuffer is a part:

     #43. Why doesn't Expect kill telnet (or other programs) sometimes?
     
     From: libes (Don Libes)
     To: Karl.Sierka@Labyrinth.COM
     Subject: Re: need help running telnet Expect script from cron on sunos 4.1.3
     
     karl.sierka@labyrinth.com writes:
     >       The only problem I am still having with the script I wrote is that
     >    the telnet does not seem to die on it's own, unless I turn on debugging.
     
     Actually, Expect doesn't explicitly kill processes at all.  Generally,
     processes kill themselves after reading EOF on input.  So it just seems
     like Expect kills all of its children.
     
     >    I was forced to save the pid of the spawned telnet, and kill it with an
     >    'exec kill $pid' in a proc that is hopefully called before the script
     >    exits. This seems to work fine, but it makes me nervous since omnet
     >    charges for connect time, and leaving a hung telnet lying around could
     >    get expensive. I warned the rest of the staff so that they will also be
     >    on the lookout for any possible hung telnets to omnet.
     
     The problem is that telnet is not recognizing EOF.  (This is quite
     understandable since real users can't actually generate one from the
     telnet user interface.)  The solution is to either 1) explicitly drive
     telnet to kill itself (i.e., a graceful logout) followed by "expect
     eof" or 2) "exec kill" as you are doing.
     
     This is described further in Exploring Expect beginning on page 103.
     
     Don

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