[Expectperl-discuss] perplexing problem with spawn and sh script

[expect <ex...@ih...>]

First I'll try to frame the problem as best as I can.

I am using Expect to run sh scripts that are normally used interactively.
In the production script different sh scripts are run depending on 
what's passed to the perl script via Getopt::Long.

When choosing one script, things break.  But choosing the other sh script,
things work fine.  The sh scripts are very similar and written using the same
sh functions, etc.  Now I cut-n-pasted the Expect code, from the perl
script that is failing to run the sh script, and created a small
version that does just the Expect part and things work as expected (pun).

My guesses were that something wonky was going on with redirecting
STDOUT and STDERR to log files.  But changing those things has not been
fruitful.  So I am really puzzled as to why this is failing.  As a
possible clue the sh script seems to pause for ~12 seconds before printing
out the final menu choice with the default answer.  The menu is displayed
using a cat <<EOF

---------------------------------
Installation
---------------------------------

Menu
  1) Create a new install
  2) Drop an install
  3) QUIT
EOF

and the final choice query and default answer are displayed using
echo " Make a choice: [3] \c" 1>&2



Spawned '/temp/testinstall.sh'
        spawn id(9)
        Pid: 794708
        Tty: /dev/pts/2
        Expect::spawn('Expect', '/temp/testinstall.sh') called at ./testinst.pl line 347
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm line 1386.
Closing .
        Expect::hard_close('Expect=GLOB(0x20589328)') called at /usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm line 1575
        Expect::DESTROY('Expect=GLOB(0x20589328)') called at ./testinst.pl line 354
        eval {...} called at ./testinst.pl line 354
 closed.
Closing spawn id(9).
        Expect::soft_close('Expect=GLOB(0x205ab95c)') called at ./testinst.pl line 411
---------------------------------
Installation
---------------------------------

Menu
  1) Create a new install
  2) Drop an install
  3) QUIT

Timed out waiting for an EOF from spawn id(9).
spawn id(9) closed.
Pid 794708 of spawn id(9) exited, Status: 0x01
Closing spawn id(9).
        Expect::hard_close('Expect=GLOB(0x205ab95c)') called at /usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm line 1575
        Expect::DESTROY('Expect=GLOB(0x205ab95c)') called at ./testinst.pl line 0
        eval {...} called at ./testinst.pl line 0
Make a choice: [3]


In the debugger (perl -d perlscript) the perl script hangs forever here
waiting for something from the sh script:

Expect::AUTOLOAD(/usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm:274):
274:      my $ref = ref($tmp);
Expect::AUTOLOAD(/usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm:275):
275:      return (wantarray? @{$tmp} : $tmp) if ($ref eq 'ARRAY');
Expect::AUTOLOAD(/usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm:276):
276:      return (wantarray? %{$tmp} : $tmp) if ($ref eq 'HASH');
Expect::AUTOLOAD(/usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm:277):
277:      return $tmp;
Expect::spawn(/usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm:124):
124:        my $errstatus = sysread(STAT_RDR, $errno, 256);



Here's a snippet from a successful run:

# /tmp/exptest.pl /tmp/test.cfg
Spawned 'testinstall.sh'
        spawn id(5)
        Pid: 753842
        Tty: /dev/pts/2
        Expect::spawn('Expect', 'testinstall.sh') called at /tmp/exptest.pl line 24
Closing .
        Expect::hard_close('Expect=GLOB(0x204948ec)') called at /usr/btools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.1/Expect.pm line 1575
        Expect::DESTROY('Expect=GLOB(0x204948ec)') called at /tmp/exptest.pl line 31
        eval {...} called at /tmp/exptest.pl line 31
 closed.
Starting EXPECT pattern matching...
        Expect::expect('Expect=GLOB(0x20235440)', undef, '[8]') called at /tmp/exptest.pl line 52
spawn id(5): beginning expect.
        Timeout: unlimited seconds.
        Current time: Sat Nov 23 15:01:51 2002
spawn id(5): list of patterns:
  #1: -ex `[3]'


spawn id(5): Does `'
match:
  pattern #1: -ex `[3]'? No.



So here I get the "Starting EXPECT pattern matching..." and everything
works just as it should.


Thanks for any tips you can offer.