linux

The only book about Expect, so one cannot compare it to others. But it serves it's purpose. Expect is a Tcl extension with about forty extra commands and variables to handle interactive processes from a script. This capability is unique to that Language. With ExpectK one can use Tk as well. I read the book in three nights, because it was such a help to my sysadmin tasks on UNIX. But despite all my propaganda, only one other person picked it up for writing a chat robot. The book is a must for every UNIX admin, if he is free to use the languages he likes, which is, unfortunately, not the case in many banks.

a quick rundown of what I needed to do:

We have RSA fobs that have an algorithmically changing number displayed on them. Logging into a remote machine requires that we check the fobs readout for the current number. Needless to say, it's not possible to automate this part, but all of the other parts are automatable. It took me a long time to find how to "exit out of the automation, and jump back into it", and this is likely one of the more useful features of expect.

As others have said, the structure of this book is not very predictable, and the parts that you wish would be more detailed, are the ones that lack the most info (the actual expect script command, and it's branching structure is only discussed to "one level deep").

In general, you use expect to kludge together apps...so in a sense, expect has grown to be somewhat of a kludge in and of itself. It's a necessity in the UNIX world, but don't expect to master it fully for a long time.

The good thing about this book is that it gives one a basic back ground of TCL before delving into Expect which, makes it an excellent "quick" reference book to have on the shelf. The only drawback I can really think of is that it is not extensive as it should be to make it an exhaustive reference guide.

Nice book. Worth the money you pay.