Talk:Expect

from VfD

Mmmm, ads. I can expect the outcome of this... hfool 22:10, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• keep Expect is very well known in the UNIX world. While the article needs to be rewritten, it is worth keeping. Sortior 23:39, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
• Ads should be deleted on sight to discourage their proliferation. This is verbatim from http://expect.nist.gov/ --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 02:47, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• keep important part of the standard unix toolkit. not an ad, it's freely available software. Wolfman 05:51, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Delete: It's a software review. This "makes this stuff trivial," then a lot more POV reviewing of how cool this is. Wikipedia is not Freshmeat. Geogre 05:55, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Delete poorly-written advertising. Cdc 06:16, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Mikkalai 06:25, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. I agree with Sortior, although I would add that my son has used it on Windows systems, too. Omitting Expect from Wikipedia would be a bit like omitting the Swiss Army knife, in my opinion. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 12:57, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Article is too light though, and too techy. Standard UNIX tool. Not an adv. Can be obtained free of charge with no registration.
• Keep. I agree with everyone else who points out how notable Expect is. The page could use a heavy-duty rewrite, but we've got articles for things like dd and Perl. --Plutor 16:15, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Keep and ignore the Microsoft tools. [[User:GRider|GRider\^talk]] 17:07, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Keep I cleaned up what's there, as well. Wyss 00:47, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Keep it. —[[User:Radman1|RaD Man (talk)]] 04:57, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Trollminator 02:37, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Keep - I expanded the article to include information regarding ports of the tool to python and perl. It is a key tool used in industry (I work for a major technology company, and use expect in Perl extensively - and have used tcl/expect on previous projects over the years; as I move projects to python, I am also porting the expect functionality) - and without Don's work on the original Tcl/Expect, we would not have the portable and easy to use automation we have today in other languages. In fact, you could view python's twisted project as a spin-off of the Expect concept for automated interaction. From a historical perspective I think it is an important (if underrated) piece of the internet history...I think the article can be further improved beyond my quick edits (the 'pros' and 'cons' section are too Windows-centric imho).
• "It is sometimes challenging to remember when a variable must be prefixed with a "$", and when it must not." This is uh.. crap. prefix with a $ to get the value of the variable substituted on the command.

end moved discussion

interact

if the script ends with the expect command interact you will be able to use expect to automate logins to manually execute actions once logged in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.97.110.63 (talk) 00:34, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

mvnc, vc,mcl, .z./xxcz/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.14.218 (talk) 20:58, 21 October 2011 (UTC) 

Cons?

The section with the pros and cons is awkward. Does it make sense at all? Do other software tools have something similar? I guess a "Limitations" section would be more logical.

And more concretely, it's brutally, savagely stupid to consider a "con" of the tool the possibility of an admin storing passwords to automate logins. I guess bash, keyboards and disks also have such a "con" then. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.112.174.214 (talk) 02:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

agreed with "Cons -> Limitations". Also, quoting from the start of the article, "Expect (...) is a program to automate interactions with programs that expose a text terminal interface." makes it obvious that not being able to be used with GUI programs is not a Con, in the same way that 'cat' can't add gaussian blur to images. pløft (talk) 15:22, 25 March 2013 (UTC)