'read' functionality in expect script

[m4rtin]

Is there a similar thing in expect, as there is 'read'(Read a line from standard input) in bash?

I mean one could easily construct following script in bash:

> cat script.sh 
#!/bin/bash

read -p "Username: " uname
stty -echo
read -p "Password: " passwd; echo
stty echo


echo "Now I am able to use username(which is $uname in this case) and password($passwd in this case) as variables in the script."

However, this:

#!/usr/local/bin/expect -f

read -p "Username: " uname
stty -echo
read -p "Password: " passwd; echo
stty echo

set timeout -1
spawn telnet -K 192.168.1.10
match_max 100000
expect -exact "Username: "
send -- "$uname\r"
expect -exact "Password: "
send -- "$passwd\r"
expect -exact "homeswitch#"
send -- "exit\r"
expect eof

..obviously does not work. I know there is "set password" option in expect, but this does look bit pointless as I have to write password into the expect script file anyway, which I need to avoid

Any suggestions? Or please ask if I was unclear

[waynemot]

[/CODE]

However, this:

#!/usr/local/bin/expect -f

read -p "Username: " uname
stty -echo
read -p "Password: " passwd; echo
stty echo

set timeout -1
spawn telnet -K 192.168.1.10
match_max 100000
expect -exact "Username: "
send -- "$uname\r"
expect -exact "Password: "
send -- "$passwd\r"
expect -exact "homeswitch#"
send -- "exit\r"
expect eof

If you are not married to the idea of an interactive approach, maybe just specifying the uname and password on the expect command line would suffice. Expect was designed to remove the human from the task performed so under typical use you would call the expect script with command line options and "regexp" them out of $argv (pg. 175 in Libes' Expect book)

Otherwise, you could double wrapper with the expect script in-lined into a shell script that does what you want up front reading from user's input and then passing those to the expect script as command line args.