Scripting Telnet

[Emile van Sebille]

Hello all,

I've accepted a project and I think I can use Python for part of it.

The project is moving data collected in a warehouse management system
into a proprietary, legacy CHUI application.  The information is to be
processed hourly by a cron job under HPUX.  Most of the legacy app
source code is available, but there are some black boxes in there I
can't get at.  The app doesn't like standard input redirection, but will
run in a telnet session.

My choices appear to be 1) write a utility in the native app's
environment the mimics the result set of the current app (and I _really_
don't want to wade through that crap to figure it out); or 2) script the
input requirements and feed the application while it runs (I've done
this for smaller projects using VB sendkeys).

I feel that python ought to be good for this, and I'm hoping you'll
point me to the appropriate modules to look into or techniques to use.
I did a little browsing through dejanews and saw a reference to perl's
expect that looks like it does this kind of work, so maybe there's a
python tool too?

Trying-to-get-paid-and-learn-more-python-at-it-ly y'rs,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com
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