Expect::Simple(3pm)					User Contributed Perl Documentation				       Expect::Simple(3pm)

NAME

       Expect::Simple - wrapper around the Expect module

SYNOPSIS

	 use Expect::Simple;

	 my $obj = new Expect::Simple
	       { Cmd => [ dmcoords => 'verbose=1', "infile=$infile"],
		 Prompt => [ -re => 'dmcoords>:s+' ],
		 DisconnectCmd => 'q',
		 Verbose => 0,
		 Debug => 0,
		 Timeout => 100
	       };

	 $obj->send( $cmd );
	 print $obj->before;
	 print $obj->after;
	 print $obj->match_str, "
";
	 print $obj->match_idx, "
";
	 print $obj->error_expect;
	 print $obj->error;

	 $expect_object = $obj->expect_handle;

DESCRIPTION

       "Expect::Simple" is a wrapper around the "Expect" module which should suffice for simple applications.  It hides most of the "Expect"
       machinery; the "Expect" object is available for tweaking if need be.

       Generally, one starts by creating an Expect::Simple object using new.  This will start up the target program, and will wait until one of
       the specified prompts is output by the target.  At that point the caller should send() commands to the program; the results are available
       via the before, after, match_str, and match_idx methods.  Since Expect simulates a terminal, there will be extra "
" characters at the end
       of each line in the result (on UNIX at least).  This is easily fixed:

	   ($res = $obj->before) =~ tr/
//d;
	   @lines = split( "
", $res );

       This is not done automatically.

       Exceptions will be thrown on error (match with "/Expect::Simple/").  Errors from Expect are available via the error_expect method.  More
       human readable errors are available via the error method.

       The connection is automatically broken (by sending the specified disconnect command to the target) when the Expect::Simple object is
       destroyed.

   Methods
       new
		   $obj = Expect::Simple->new( \%attr );

	       This creates a new object, starting up the program with which to communicate (using the Expect spawn method) and waiting for a
	       prompt.	The passed hash reference must contain at least the Prompt, DisconnectCmd, and Cmd elements.  The available attributes
	       are:

	       Cmd
			 Cmd => $command,
			 Cmd => [ $command, $arg1, $arg2, ... ],

		       The command to which to connect.  The passed command may either be a scalar or an array.

	       Prompt  This specifies one or more prompts to scan for.	For a single prompt, the value may be a scalar; for more, or for matching
		       of regular expressions, it should be an array reference.  For example,

			 Prompt => 'prompt1> ',
			 Prompt => [ 'prompt1> ', 'prompt2> ', -re => 'promptd+>s+' ]

		       All prompts are taken literally, unless immediately preceded by a "-re" flag, in which case they are regular expressions.

	       DisconnectCmd
		       This is the command to be sent to the target program which will cause it to exit.

	       RawPty  If set, then underlying Expect object's pty mode is set to raw mode (see  Expect::raw_pty()).

	       Timeout The time in seconds to wait until giving up on the target program responding.  This is used during program startup and when
		       any commands are sent to the program.  It defaults to 1000 seconds.

	       Debug   The value is passed to Expect via its debug method.

	       Verbose This results in various messages printed to the STDERR stream.  If greater than 3, it turns on Expect's logging to STDOUT
		       (via the log_stdout Expect method.

       send
		  $obj->send( $cmd );
		  $obj->send( @cmds );

	       Send one or more commands to the target.  After each command is sent, it waits for a prompt from the target.  Only the output
	       resulting from the last command is available via the after, before, etc. methods.

       match_idx
	       This returns a unary based index indicating which prompt (in the list of prompts specified via the "Prompt" attribute to the new
	       method) was received after the last command was sent.  It will be undef if none was returned.

       match_str
	       This returns the prompt which was matched after the last command was sent.

       before  This returns the string received before the prompt.  If no prompt was seen, it returns all output accumulated.  This is usually
	       what the caller wants to parse.	Note that the first line will (usually) be the command that was sent to the target, because of
	       echoing.  Check this out to be sure!

       after   This returns the 'after' string.  Please read the Expect docs for more enlightenment.

       error   This returns a cleaned up, more humanly readable version of the errors from Expect.  It'll be undef if there was no error.

       error_expect
	       This returns the original Expect error.

       expect_handle
	       This returns the Expect object, in case further tweaking is necessary.

BUGS

       If the command to be run does not exist (or not in the current execution path), it's quite possible that the new method will not throw an
       exception.  It's up to the caller to make sure that the command will run!  There's no known workaround for this.

LICENSE

       This software is released under the GNU General Public License.	You may find a copy at

	  http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html

AUTHOR

       Diab Jerius (djerius@cpan.org)

perl v5.12.4							    2008-05-06						       Expect::Simple(3pm)