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(slightly skeptical)
Open Source Software Educational Society
May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
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May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
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A completely different tool, July 17, 2000
Expect really does make all these things trivial. It takes a lot of patience to master this tool though; Tcl is a very unforgiving and terse language. I've done things in Expect that I never thought were possible: I scripted Minicom (a modem term program that uses ncurses) to answer a phone after 7 seconds, and either: receive a zmodem file or send a login prompt. Then hang up the modem and wait again. Try that in a shell or systems language! It's unfortunate that Expect is such a radically different
beast and takes so long to understand; every person running
regression tests or doing systems administration will benefit
from this book. While it may not be great for just "looking
up" things, search Usenet for all of the author's posts (comp.lang.tcl)
and his answer is almost always, "This is on page XXX of the
book." Because the book really does cover everything Expect
does! |
Good examples, good index, good explanations, May 20,
1998
I like how the author addresses issues of portability without obsessing on it. I really like the Exercises at the end of each chapter. I only wish the author would apply a difficulty rating to each exercise because sometimes I can't tell if an exercise is intrinsically very difficult (some are definitely so) or if I need to review parts of the chapter to see why I can't just instantly 'get it.' In any event, the exercises are stimulating and would require a long time and careful thought to do them all. I would buy a book that had the answers, with commentary, to all the exercises. |
No alternatives, December 29, 2000
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
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 - not only did it have my exact scenario as an example but now I see Expect can do so many more cool things. I originally thought Expect was just good for telnet. But Libes shows examples applying it to all sorts of other programs. The breadth of the examples alone is incredible. It's obvious that Libes has really been around and poured all his wisdom and experience into this book. I also liked the special command and variable index (the book calls it "Appendix") which is a 2nd index that takes you directly to where each command and option and variable is definitively described. There is also a third index of just the examples - some of them are useful in their own right (apart from demonstrating some concept). Between these and the regular index, it is always easy to find things later. I wish all tech books were written this well.
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Last modified: August 10, 2009
Based on 20 reviews.