Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,
I am familiar with using a backslash to escape a $ in a send command, but this device I am using expect to talk to has a regex expression that I need to input and it is a bear. Is there a list of all the characters that require escaping in an expect send statement ? Here is what I need to 'send'.. Pretty gross huh ?

Code:

issue message "((-config was changed)|(from USER EXEC mode)|(logout from src IP))|(UI CMD_EXECUTED.*Command (add|alias|apply|batch|bind|clear|convert|create|reboot|renumber|set|unalias|unbind|unset))|(AAA-5-AAA_AUTH_ADMIN_USER: aaa.(.*)[\\t ]for[\\t ]admin[\\t ]user[\\t ])|(AUDIT - user \\S+)|(Begin configuration)|(Login permitted from)|(MANAGER Mode)|(OSAPI-5-CLEAN_TASK:\\s*osapi_task.c:(?:.*)cleaning\\s*up\\s*exited\\s*task)|(PIX-5-11100[5,7,8])|(PIX-5-199001)|(PIX-5-611103)|(Reloaded at)|(SME TELNET from)|(SYS-5-CONFIG_I)|(SYS-5-RELOAD)|(SYS-5-RESTART)|(SYS-6-CFG)|(SYS-6-CFG_CHG.*?/(\\S+)/)|(SYSLOG_CONFIG)|(SYSTEM_RESET)|(User .* executed the .*(write mem|copy run|copy start|erase).*command)|(cli: +.*: config)" regex

Thanks

---------- Post updated at 10:44 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:43 AM ----------

Welcome to the forum ob2s. If you run autoexpect and at the command prompt type a pound sign so the OS doesn't do anything with your junky string and then paste it. Type exit and you will see the send command it created out of your junky string. Take that line and paste it into vi and then paste the original string under and do stare and compare to see what it escaped since autoexpect has escaping coded into it.
You will want to run the script.exp it produced and write the output to a file to make sure it is exact the same.
Good luck.