Exploring Expect (Nutshell Handbooks)

Although I've just started reading the book ( first 5 chapters ) it already impressed me with intensive depth the author covers all related topics. Sure, Expect is great ( and thank's for this tool, Don ! ) but this book isn't only about Expect - it's about almost *everything* you'll ever need to program interactive scripts using Expect. It talks about Tcl, zombies in UNIX, regular expressions ( really *in depth* talk ), "\r\n"... Read Full Review

When I discovered Perl I though it's a quick and dirty way to automate admin tasks. I was wrong. The really quick and dirty way is Expect. Expect works like Helpdesk hotline. You call them and they ask you what you see and tell you what you should type. Sometimes you just have no alternatives especially if you're short on time. But the language is pretty tricky (e.g. if you want to look for '$' in regexp, you should use '\\\$'... Read Full Review

The only book about Expect, so one cannot compare it to others. But it serves it's purpose. Expect is a Tcl extension with about forty extra commands and variables to handle interactive processes from a script. This capability is unique to that Language. With ExpectK one can use Tk as well. I read the book in three nights, because it was such a help to my sysadmin tasks on UNIX. But despite all my propaganda, only one... Read Full Review

This book is terrific. Libes writes very smoothly. Everything is answered and just at the right time - whenever I was wondering about a point, I would turn the page and find my question to be the next topic covered!I really thought Expect was a simple-minded thing. Then I had a question about how to do something. I was bemoaning my problem one day when a coworker thrust this book into my hand and said "Read it!" Wow... Read Full Review

This book, along with Ousterhout and Sun's references on the www, comprise the triolgy that is jump-starting my learning tcl. I find the index compete and easy to use and I frequently jump all around the book gleaning little nuggets of information. I am also concurrently reading it cover-to-cover because I like Libes's style -- the way he throws in his programming phylosophy with his examples so you can see why he's doing... Read Full Review