tcljava-user

[tcljava-user] Expect support

[Chet V. <che...@gm...>]

Hi

Sorry if this is a newbie question but I was wondering if there's
support for Expect scripts. i.e can I run an expect script using the
Jacl interpreter ? We use expect primarily for network admin tasks
like login into devices/term servers via telnet/ssh and run commands.
Any useful pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Chetan Vora

Re: [tcljava-user] Expect support

[D. J. H. <dha...@mi...>]

You definitely would not be able to use the full power of expect from
jacl, since that extension does some fairly low-level plumbing with Unix
PTY's, forking, and process control.

For telnet, you may be able to make socket connections and use a
simplified version of expect -- I think I remember seeing some examples
on the http://wiki.tcl.tk site.  SSH would be harder because you would
need to either write your own channel implementation using a pure-Java
ssh implementation (like jsch) or do your own tricks with Runtime.exec
and piped Input/Output streams and threads.

Hope this helps,

			-=- D. J.

Chet Vora wrote:
> Sorry if this is a newbie question but I was wondering if there's
> support for Expect scripts. i.e can I run an expect script using the
> Jacl interpreter ? We use expect primarily for network admin tasks
> like login into devices/term servers via telnet/ssh and run commands.
> Any useful pointers would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Chetan Vora
> 
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Re: [tcljava-user] Expect support

[Mo D. <mo...@mo...>]

Chet Vora wrote:
> Hi
>
> Sorry if this is a newbie question but I was wondering if there's
> support for Expect scripts. i.e can I run an expect script using the
> Jacl interpreter ? We use expect primarily for network admin tasks
> like login into devices/term servers via telnet/ssh and run commands.
> Any useful pointers would be appreciated.
>   
Hi Chet

There is zero chance of expect working in Jacl. It depends on low level 
IO stuff that Java just
does not support. You could use expect in Tcl Blend though.

Mo DeJong

Re: [tcljava-user] Expect support

[Justin R. <ju...@ha...>]

In the Java space you have a few options for ssh/telnet scripting. The
cleanest implementation I've seen is enchanter (1).  While expectj (2)
is more compliant with actual expect library. I learned this while
investigating a expect solution for tcljava, and I also found that my
best option was to just write one myself which supports not only
expect in java but also the bindings needed for tcljava. The library
is called expect4j:

http://code.google.com/p/expect4j/

expect4j is aimed at supporting the functionality of the C-based
expect library, started by Don Libes, in java and tcljava.  The
library is written in java and uses a bootstrap class called
ExpectEmulation of load the relevant bindings into a tcljava Intrep.
The most important tcl functions have been implement, e.g. expect,
send, spawn. A full list of supported functions and global variables
are commented in ExpectEmulation.java.  I've successfully ported a
100K tcl script based on expect to tcljava, without any changes, by
just using expect4j.

One of the major limitations is that only ssh and telnet are supported
by the spawn command. This was done to limit interactions with
Runtime.exec(), and to keep the library completely in the java space.
This avoids the need for process control, forking, and PTYs.  On the
otherhand, the Expect4j class can be used for automating any
InputStream/OutputStream or Socket.  One of the unit tests shows how
to automate the "cmd /c net statistics Workstation" command on
Windows. For support of ssh/telnet, Jsch is used for ssh and
commons-net is used for telnet. The expect command can also match
against many different regexps/strings, unlike the other expect-like
libraries. ORO is used for the pattern matching.

The library is commented and unit tests are used to keep the library
in check is expect's original behavior. BUT there is little
documentation. For me, expect4j saved the day. If anyone is interested
in using this library I'd be happy to walk you through it. I'll use
that as motivation for writing the documentation.

Justin Ryan
Halfempty Industries

(1) http://code.google.com/p/enchanter/
(2) http://expectj.sourceforge.net/


On 11/8/07, Mo DeJong <mo...@mo...> wrote:
> Chet Vora wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > Sorry if this is a newbie question but I was wondering if there's
> > support for Expect scripts. i.e can I run an expect script using the
> > Jacl interpreter ? We use expect primarily for network admin tasks
> > like login into devices/term servers via telnet/ssh and run commands.
> > Any useful pointers would be appreciated.
> >
> Hi Chet
>
> There is zero chance of expect working in Jacl. It depends on low level
> IO stuff that Java just
> does not support. You could use expect in Tcl Blend though.
>
> Mo DeJong
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
> Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
> Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
> Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tcljava-user
>

Re: [tcljava-user] Expect support

[Tom P. <tpo...@ny...>]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2007 at 02:41:47PM -0500, Justin Ryan wrote:
> http://code.google.com/p/expect4j/
> 

Nice work!

-- 
Tom Poindexter
tpo...@ny...

Re: [tcljava-user] Expect support

[Mo D. <mo...@mo...>]

Justin Ryan wrote:
> In the Java space you have a few options for ssh/telnet scripting. The
> cleanest implementation I've seen is enchanter (1).  While expectj (2)
> is more compliant with actual expect library. I learned this while
> investigating a expect solution for tcljava, and I also found that my
> best option was to just write one myself which supports not only
> expect in java but also the bindings needed for tcljava. The library
> is called expect4j:
>
> http://code.google.com/p/expect4j/
>
> expect4j is aimed at supporting the functionality of the C-based
> expect library, started by Don Libes, in java and tcljava.  The
> library is written in java and uses a bootstrap class called
> ExpectEmulation of load the relevant bindings into a tcljava Intrep.
> The most important tcl functions have been implement, e.g. expect,
> send, spawn. A full list of supported functions and global variables
> are commented in ExpectEmulation.java.  I've successfully ported a
> 100K tcl script based on expect to tcljava, without any changes, by
> just using expect4j.
>
> One of the major limitations is that only ssh and telnet are supported
> by the spawn command. This was done to limit interactions with
> Runtime.exec(), and to keep the library completely in the java space.
> This avoids the need for process control, forking, and PTYs.  On the
> otherhand, the Expect4j class can be used for automating any
> InputStream/OutputStream or Socket.  One of the unit tests shows how
> to automate the "cmd /c net statistics Workstation" command on
> Windows. For support of ssh/telnet, Jsch is used for ssh and
> commons-net is used for telnet. The expect command can also match
> against many different regexps/strings, unlike the other expect-like
> libraries. ORO is used for the pattern matching.
>
>   

Hi Justin

Thanks for posting this note, I did not know there was a useful expect 
implementation out there
for Jacl. BTW, if you are looking for a home for the project, I really 
have no problem with adding
your expect implementation to the standard Jacl distro. Jacl already has 
Itcl bundled with it.
There are some issues that would need to be ironed out (license, regexp 
impl, and so on) but it should work,
if you are interested.

cheers
Mo DeJong

Re: [tcljava-user] Expect support

[Chet V. <che...@gm...>]

Thanks to everyone for responding. Justin, thanks for the links....the
enchanter project looks interesting from our vantage point at first
glance.

It would be cool if its possible to integrate a Java scripting API to
it.(jsr223)

Regards,
CV



On Nov 8, 2007 5:59 PM, Mo DeJong <mo...@mo...> wrote:
>
> Justin Ryan wrote:
> > In the Java space you have a few options for ssh/telnet scripting. The
> > cleanest implementation I've seen is enchanter (1).  While expectj (2)
> > is more compliant with actual expect library. I learned this while
> > investigating a expect solution for tcljava, and I also found that my
> > best option was to just write one myself which supports not only
> > expect in java but also the bindings needed for tcljava. The library
> > is called expect4j:
> >
> > http://code.google.com/p/expect4j/
> >
> > expect4j is aimed at supporting the functionality of the C-based
> > expect library, started by Don Libes, in java and tcljava.  The
> > library is written in java and uses a bootstrap class called
> > ExpectEmulation of load the relevant bindings into a tcljava Intrep.
> > The most important tcl functions have been implement, e.g. expect,
> > send, spawn. A full list of supported functions and global variables
> > are commented in ExpectEmulation.java.  I've successfully ported a
> > 100K tcl script based on expect to tcljava, without any changes, by
> > just using expect4j.
> >
> > One of the major limitations is that only ssh and telnet are supported
> > by the spawn command. This was done to limit interactions with
> > Runtime.exec(), and to keep the library completely in the java space.
> > This avoids the need for process control, forking, and PTYs.  On the
> > otherhand, the Expect4j class can be used for automating any
> > InputStream/OutputStream or Socket.  One of the unit tests shows how
> > to automate the "cmd /c net statistics Workstation" command on
> > Windows. For support of ssh/telnet, Jsch is used for ssh and
> > commons-net is used for telnet. The expect command can also match
> > against many different regexps/strings, unlike the other expect-like
> > libraries. ORO is used for the pattern matching.
> >
> >
>
> Hi Justin
>
> Thanks for posting this note, I did not know there was a useful expect
> implementation out there
> for Jacl. BTW, if you are looking for a home for the project, I really
> have no problem with adding
> your expect implementation to the standard Jacl distro. Jacl already has
> Itcl bundled with it.
> There are some issues that would need to be ironed out (license, regexp
> impl, and so on) but it should work,
> if you are interested.
>
> cheers
>
> Mo DeJong
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
> Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
> Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
> Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
> _______________________________________________
> tcljava-user mailing list
> tcl...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tcljava-user
>