1Expect::Simple(3)     User Contributed Perl Documentation    Expect::Simple(3)
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NAME

6       Expect::Simple - wrapper around the Expect module
7

SYNOPSIS

9         use Expect::Simple;
10
11         my $obj = new Expect::Simple
12               { Cmd => [ dmcoords => 'verbose=1', "infile=$infile"],
13                 Prompt => [ -re => 'dmcoords>:\s+' ],
14                 DisconnectCmd => 'q',
15                 Verbose => 0,
16                 Debug => 0,
17                 Timeout => 100
18               };
19
20         $obj->send( $cmd );
21         print $obj->before;
22         print $obj->after;
23         print $obj->match_str, "\n";
24         print $obj->match_idx, "\n";
25         print $obj->error_expect;
26         print $obj->error;
27
28         $expect_object = $obj->expect_handle;
29

DESCRIPTION

31       "Expect::Simple" is a wrapper around the "Expect" module which should
32       suffice for simple applications.  It hides most of the "Expect"
33       machinery; the "Expect" object is available for tweaking if need be.
34
35       Generally, one starts by creating an Expect::Simple object using new.
36       This will start up the target program, and will wait until one of the
37       specified prompts is output by the target.  At that point the caller
38       should send() commands to the program; the results are available via
39       the before, after, match_str, and match_idx methods.  Since Expect
40       simulates a terminal, there will be extra "\r" characters at the end of
41       each line in the result (on UNIX at least).  This is easily fixed:
42
43           ($res = $obj->before) =~ tr/\r//d;
44           @lines = split( "\n", $res );
45
46       This is not done automatically.
47
48       Exceptions will be thrown on error (match with "/Expect::Simple/").
49       Errors from Expect are available via the error_expect method.  More
50       human readable errors are available via the error method.
51
52       The connection is automatically broken (by sending the specified
53       disconnect command to the target) when the Expect::Simple object is
54       destroyed.
55
56   Methods
57       new
58                   $obj = Expect::Simple->new( \%attr );
59
60               This creates a new object, starting up the program with which
61               to communicate (using the Expect spawn method) and waiting for
62               a prompt.  The passed hash reference must contain at least the
63               Prompt, DisconnectCmd, and Cmd elements.  The available
64               attributes are:
65
66               Cmd
67                         Cmd => $command,
68                         Cmd => [ $command, $arg1, $arg2, ... ],
69
70                       The command to which to connect.  The passed command
71                       may either be a scalar or an array.
72
73               Prompt  This specifies one or more prompts to scan for.  For a
74                       single prompt, the value may be a scalar; for more, or
75                       for matching of regular expressions, it should be an
76                       array reference.  For example,
77
78                         Prompt => 'prompt1> ',
79                         Prompt => [ 'prompt1> ', 'prompt2> ', -re => 'prompt\d+>\s+' ]
80
81                       All prompts are taken literally, unless immediately
82                       preceded by a "-re" flag, in which case they are
83                       regular expressions.
84
85               DisconnectCmd
86                       This is the command to be sent to the target program
87                       which will cause it to exit.
88
89               RawPty  If set, then underlying Expect object's pty mode is set
90                       to raw mode (see  Expect::raw_pty()).
91
92               Timeout The time in seconds to wait until giving up on the
93                       target program responding.  This is used during program
94                       startup and when any commands are sent to the program.
95                       It defaults to 1000 seconds.
96
97               Debug   The value is passed to Expect via its debug method.
98
99               Verbose This results in various messages printed to the STDERR
100                       stream.  If greater than 3, it turns on Expect's
101                       logging to STDOUT (via the log_stdout Expect method.
102
103       send
104                  $obj->send( $cmd );
105                  $obj->send( @cmds );
106
107               Send one or more commands to the target.  After each command is
108               sent, it waits for a prompt from the target.  Only the output
109               resulting from the last command is available via the after,
110               before, etc. methods.
111
112       match_idx
113               This returns a unary based index indicating which prompt (in
114               the list of prompts specified via the "Prompt" attribute to the
115               new method) was received after the last command was sent.  It
116               will be undef if none was returned.
117
118       match_str
119               This returns the prompt which was matched after the last
120               command was sent.
121
122       before  This returns the string received before the prompt.  If no
123               prompt was seen, it returns all output accumulated.  This is
124               usually what the caller wants to parse.  Note that the first
125               line will (usually) be the command that was sent to the target,
126               because of echoing.  Check this out to be sure!
127
128       after   This returns the 'after' string.  Please read the Expect docs
129               for more enlightenment.
130
131       error   This returns a cleaned up, more humanly readable version of the
132               errors from Expect.  It'll be undef if there was no error.
133
134       error_expect
135               This returns the original Expect error.
136
137       expect_handle
138               This returns the Expect object, in case further tweaking is
139               necessary.
140

BUGS

142       If the command to be run does not exist (or not in the current
143       execution path), it's quite possible that the new method will not throw
144       an exception.  It's up to the caller to make sure that the command will
145       run!  There's no known workaround for this.
146

LICENSE

148       This software is released under the GNU General Public License.  You
149       may find a copy at
150
151          http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html
152

AUTHOR

154       Diab Jerius (djerius@cpan.org)
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158perl v5.28.0                      2008-05-06                 Expect::Simple(3)
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