Automate interactive transactions with Expect (Linux.com)

[Posted August 7, 2006 by cook]

Michael Stutz explores expect in a Linux.com article. "Did you ever wish you could automate your interaction with a program, making a script that can smartly handle an interactive session? You can -- with Expect, an extension to the Tcl programming language whose purpose is to communicate with interactive applications. You can write Expect programs that automate live sessions, handling any tasks where a user interacts with the system. This suggests a multitude of uses, but where it has been most popularly applied is in software testing and in automating network transfers, such as site updates or downloads."