I've just noticed on the Activestate site that "the ActiveTcl distribution now includes Expect for Windows. A license is no longer required ....". At face value, that looks like excellent news!

One of the big uses of Tcl and Tcl/Tk is in the automation of processes / programs that are designed to work from the command line and don't have an easy interface for other automata to use them. For example, if you run a regular ssh or telnet session every day, you can automate it with relative ease through Expect, where you choreograph the session in a series of "I say this" and "you say that" type statements.

Expect was written originally for Unix and works well on Linux and OS X. Up until a year or two back, only older and somewhat unsupported / unstable releases were available on Windows due, I understand, to the underlying operating system making it quite an issue to implement the multiprocess environment expect requires. Then Activestate brought out a commercial, license-only expect extenstion to ActiveTcl. This has always felt a bit - unfortunate - that a piece of software that started as Open Source became commercial-only in this guise and I'll be off to look at the licensing agreement when I get the odd spare moment to see if it's now - as I hope - free at the point of distribution and on a license under which that distribution can be used in perpituity. With a confirmation of the latter, you'll find me grinning from ear to ear!

Added, 10th September ... I AM grinning from ear to ear. I had a chance to download and test Expect for Windows and it ran nicely, without any problems. See full source code of my example

(written 2005-09-04, updated 2006-06-05)

 T242 - Tcl/Tk - More on Expect
  [1173] Cheat Sheet / Check list for Expect maintainers - (2007-05-02)
  [1411] Buffering of inputs to expect, and match order - (2007-10-27)
  [1475] Tcl/Tk - updating your display while tasks are running - (2007-12-16)
  [1531] Expecting a item from a list of possibles - (2008-02-04)
  [2475] Quick easy and dangerous - automated logins via Tcl / Expect - (2009-10-24)
  [3009] Expect in Perl - a short explanation and a practical example - (2010-10-22)
  [3448] Checking all the systems on a subnet, using Expect and Tk - (2011-09-18)

T211 - Tcl/Tk - What is Expect? Why use it?
  [286] Automating regular manual procedures - (2005-04-21)
  [1174] Installing Tcl and Expect on Solaris 10 - a checklist - (2007-05-02)
  [1409] What is Expect? - (2007-10-26)
  [1469] Curley brackets v double quotes - Tcl, Tk, Expect - (2007-12-12)
  [1602] Automating processes through Expect - (2008-04-05)
  [2474] Using Tcl and Expect to automate repetitive jobs - (2009-10-24)
  [2489] Parallel Pinging, using Python Threads or Expect spawn lists - (2009-11-02)
  [3286] Should we cover expect and/or Tk on our public Tcl courses? - (2011-05-11)
  [3572] Adding Expect on top of Tcl - what is it and where can I get a training course to learn about it? - (2012-01-08)
  [4405] Backup procedures - via backup server - (2015-01-24)
  [4678] Expect with Ruby - a training example to get you started - (2016-05-18)

Back to Through public transport connection, Chippenham to Salisbury, to cease

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Linking Apache httpd to Apache Tomcat

You cant
Fair system for travel and accommodation expenses
Outside of the box
Linking Apache httpd to Apache Tomcat
Expect for Windows
Through public transport connection, Chippenham to Salisbury, to cease
FTP - how to make the right transfers
New print centre for our manuals
File permissions of Linux and Unix systems
Linux commands - some basics