Fwd: Re: expect

[Hardy Merrill]

I replied to Cameron offline, but thought to be fair
I'm forwarding my reply to the list...

----- Forwarded message from Hardy Merrill <hmerrill at redhat.com> -----

> Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 09:26:35 -0400
> From: Hardy Merrill <hmerrill at redhat.com>
> To: Cameron Laird <claird at starbase.neosoft.com>
> Subject: Re: expect
> 
> Cameron,
> 
> I was probably a bit premature on my negative review
> of docs, and the book, for "Expect".  I am an expect
> newbie, and I was looking for some examples to follow
> for some pretty simple things I wanted to do.  I found
> almost no examples in the manpage, and not much more
> in the book, and I couldn't find much online.  I'll
> admit that my search was pretty short-lived - I really
> only worked with expect for maybe a week, but in my
> mind the manpage should be nearly all that is necessary
> to get a good feel for how to use a tool, and I
> certainly didn't get that "good feel" from the
> expect manpage, nor did I get that from my short
> look through the "Exploring Expect" book.  Admittedly
> I probably didn't give the book the fair chance of
> an in-depth read.
> 
> Maybe my review would be a better one if I was
> a tcl/tk person, but I'm not.  I come from a Perl
> background, and I didn't have an easy time at all
> with the stuff I was trying to get working.
> 
> Probably just me - my appologies - sounds like you
> have more experience than I do with Expect, and with
> "Exploring Expect".  Again, just my initial reaction
> to trying to accomplish a task by quickly reading
> the manpage and the book.
> 
> Cameron Laird [claird at starbase.neosoft.com] wrote:
> > Are we talking about Expect, as the book documents
> > it, or the Python expect module, or some platonic
> > expect which presumably underlies both?
> 
> My Expect comments were purely about Expect, not about
> the Python expect module.
> 
> > I'm wildly enthusiastic about *Exploring Expect*.
> > I find it superlative, in several regards.
> 
> I probably didn't give "Exploring Expect" a fair shake,
> but my initial reaction was that its information
> was only somewhat better than the manpage info.
> 
> > In any case, all the other worthwhile information on
> > the (Tcl-oriented) Expect should be available through
> > <URL: http://wiki.tcl.tk/Expect >.  I doubt that
> > anything there, though, will meet your threshold for
> > "good docs".
> 
> It's been a while since I worked with Expect, and I don't
> recall if that was one of the sites I checked out, but
> I'll save that link in case I do more work with Expect.
> 
> -- 
> Hardy Merrill
> Senior Software Engineer
> Red Hat, Inc.

----- End forwarded message -----