By "better", I mean reference, not tutorial.

The only documentation that I am aware of is the book "Exploring Expect"
(by Don Libes), which I have and which is an excellent book. But this book
is explicitly tutorial and not reference. If something isn't needed for
one of his examples, you'll never find out about it.

Admitedly, the book (EE) is over 20 years old, so it may not have the latest
features. Note also: The other source of information on Expect is the man
page ("man expect"), which I have also read.

That said, here are two areas (these are not really the focus of my
question, but I provide them as illustrative of the problem):

1) The "expect" command has many more options than are documented
either in the EE book or the man page. One example is the
"-timeout" option. I found this out by doing: expect --help

2) The spawn_out array probably has many elements, but the only one I
have ever used (and the only one mentioned in EE) is
spawn_out(slave,name). The man page also mentions slave,fd.
I would like to know how to figure out what else is there.

But what I am really after is: Is there an actual reference manual that lists
everything? I've found pretty complete, reference, documentation for TCL,
but not for Expect.

--
"He is exactly as they taught in KGB school: an egoist, a liar, but talented - he
knows the mind of the wrestling-loving, under-educated, authoritarian-admiring
white male populous."
- Malcolm Nance, p59. -

On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 4:30:25 AM UTC+2, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> By "better", I mean reference, not tutorial.
>
> The only documentation that I am aware of is the book "Exploring Expect"
> (by Don Libes), which I have and which is an excellent book. But this book
> is explicitly tutorial and not reference. If something isn't needed for
> one of his examples, you'll never find out about it.
>
> Admitedly, the book (EE) is over 20 years old, so it may not have the latest
> features. Note also: The other source of information on Expect is the man
> page ("man expect"), which I have also read.
>
> That said, here are two areas (these are not really the focus of my
> question, but I provide them as illustrative of the problem):
>
> 1) The "expect" command has many more options than are documented
> either in the EE book or the man page. One example is the
> "-timeout" option. I found this out by doing: expect --help
>
> 2) The spawn_out array probably has many elements, but the only one I
> have ever used (and the only one mentioned in EE) is
> spawn_out(slave,name). The man page also mentions slave,fd.
> I would like to know how to figure out what else is there.
>
> But what I am really after is: Is there an actual reference manual that lists
> everything? I've found pretty complete, reference, documentation for TCL,
> but not for Expect.

Probably not the answer you were looking for, but my best source was the manpage (then the code).
And I have detected new aspects in the manpage after I _thinking_ that I have read it all.

In article <d2a7671e-b5d2-42e1-9b58-e5c642b94269n@googlegroups.com>,
heinrichmartin <martin.heinrich@frequentis.com> wrote:
....
>> But what I am really after is: Is there an actual reference manual that lists
>> everything? I've found pretty complete, reference, documentation for TCL,
>> but not for Expect.
>
>Probably not the answer you were looking for, but my best source was the
>manpage (then the code). And I have detected new aspects in the manpage
>after I _thinking_ that I have read it all.

Yeah, that's kind of what I expected. But, as I said, I can tell that
there are options to (e.g.) "expect" that are not documented either in EE
or in the man page. Observe:

expect 1.1> expect --help
Error: bad flag "--help": must be -glob, -regexp, -exact, -notransfer,
-nocase, -i, -indices, -iread, -timestamp, -timeout, -nobrace, or --
expect 1.2>

I know (or can guess) what some of those do, but most of them are not in EE
and at least a few of them are not in "man expect".

On a more cheery note, I did figure out from the above that there was a
-timeout flag - which I think is a good thing. I've always thought that it
would be a good thing to be able to specify the timeout "on-the-fly"
without having to modify the global variable ("timeout").

Anyway, as you say, reading the source code is always the last resort...

P.S. Incidentally, I don't think I ever actually have read the Expect manpage
cover-to-cover. I didn't really realize that it was that sort of manpage (*)
until I started researching for making this post (thread). I guess I need
to do that (read it cover-to-cover).

(*) By "that sort of manpage", I mean when you're talking about a
programming language and the manpage is actually the documentation for that
programming language. "dmake" is an example of such - the manpage is the
language documentation (and it is a very long manpage). It would be funny
if "man gcc" actually told you everything you need to learn the C language
and become a C programmer (heh heh).

--

Prayer has no place in the public schools, just like facts
have no place in organized religion.
-- Superintendent Chalmers

gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) wrote in
news:u9j6ls$2k2th$1@news.xmission.com:

> Yeah, that's kind of what I expected. But, as I said, I can tell that
> there are options to (e.g.) "expect" that are not documented either in
> EE or in the man page. Observe:
>
> expect 1.1> expect --help
> Error: bad flag "--help": must be -glob, -regexp, -exact, -notransfer,
> -nocase, -i, -indices, -iread, -timestamp, -timeout, -nobrace, or --
> expect 1.2>
>
> I know (or can guess) what some of those do, but most of them are not
> in EE and at least a few of them are not in "man expect".
>
> On a more cheery note, I did figure out from the above that there was
> a -timeout flag - which I think is a good thing. I've always thought
> that it would be a good thing to be able to specify the timeout
> "on-the-fly" without having to modify the global variable ("timeout").
The Expect man page I usually refer to is at
https://www.tcl.tk/man/expect5.31/expect.1.html and this does document
the -timeout flag for the expect command.

Colin.

In article <XnsB04BADB02191Ccolingmacleodyahooco@81.171.92.201>,
Colin Macleod <cgm@erehwon.invalid> wrote:
....
>
>The Expect man page I usually refer to is at ...
>... and this does document
>the -timeout flag for the expect command.

Yes. I noticed/realzed that -timeout is indeed mentioned iin the man page.

But many of the others aren't.

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