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Comment by phoboslab | Hacker News Reader

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phoboslab·

This repo says how it relates to other implementations but curiously fails to mention what "expect" actually is.

So for everyone as ignorant as myself, I guess it's referring to this[1]:

> Expect is a tool for automating interactive applications such as telnet, ftp, passwd, fsck, rlogin, tip, etc.

[1] https://core.tcl-lang.org/expect/index

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As an intern, I used expect in my first job to create a monitoring system for ~ 200 L3 Routers in a private network. Eventually I learned about SNMP and also that I probably should Google "How to X" before rolling out my own solution for anything.

Interestingly, I did something very similar in my first job, though it included backing up configurations and the like. It's worth noting that a lot of routers (at that time) didn't really support much in the way of SNMP. As such, one had to navigate menus to get to the necessary options; and nothing is as potent as Expect at that kind of thing.

About 20 years ago, I built a system for L3 router configuration using expect. It basically allowed support people to move a port's VLAN and change its status from a web app. It was for a local telco and they used it for a couple of hospitality / hotel customers, IIRC.

It used to be hosted by https://nist.gov/ at expect.nist.gov

Here is it in 1997, it hasn't changed much.

https://web.archive.org/web/19971210131642/http://expect.nis...

Thanks for the feedback - I've updated the README file.

thanks. i was assuming it was some sort of unit testing thing. "expect" foo to equal bar kinda stuff.

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