Re: How can I show all input and output with Expect.pm

I see two main problems.

First, the following lines are in the wrong order for what you want your output to be:

print "$command\n";
$exp->send("$command\n");
$exp->expect(1, '-re','\(\d+\)');
[download]

You probably want this order instead:

$exp->send("$command\n");
print "$command\n";
$exp->expect(1, '-re','\(\d+\)');
[download]

Second, this:

my $counter = 1;
print "($counter) ";
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Should just be this:

my $counter = 0;
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The extra stuff is just junk since you print and increment the counter in your loop. This change will fix printing 1 and 2 together like you observed here: (1) (2) Here is the second command

EDIT: Hmmm. Looking at your scripts more closely, I'm having second thoughts about this. What if you just print it all from the server script? Like this:

while (<STDIN>) {
  chomp;

  $counter++;
  print "($counter) $_\n";

  if ($_ eq "error")  {print "Error on command #$counter\n";}
  if ($_ eq "commit") {print "Committing data\n";}
  if ($_ eq "exit")   {print "Exiting program...\n"; exit;}
}
[download]

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Re^2: How can I show all input and output with Expect.pm
by GeorgeAdams (Initiate) on Oct 06, 2014 at 22:35 UTC

@frozenwithjoy, thanks for the reply. To answer your questions:

It doesn't seem that reversing the order of the commands

print "$command\n";
$exp->send("$command\n");

makes any difference either to the STDOUT or logfile output. It still gives:

(1) (2) Here is the second command
error
(3) Error on command #3
(4) commit
This is the last command
Committing data
(5) (6) exit
Exiting program...

The server script has to print out the "(1) " before it receives any input. When it gets a line, it simply prints out "(2) " , waits for the next line, prints "(3) ", waits for the next line, etc. The code isn't optimized, but that's at least the explanation of why the $counter = 1 and the first print statement comes before the loop.

That is, if you ran the server script and entered stuff, you'd get:
```
(1) This is the first line I typed.  Now I'm hitting <ENTER>
(2) I'm typing more stuff.
(3) exit
Exiting program...
```
Good question. The server script is actually representing what I cannot control in this. It may be a company-wide program I'm trying to interact with, or a Juniper router, or an IDS box, or probably a lot of other things. So unfortunately for this example I have to pretend that I can't modify the server's output. All I can do is interact with the (program, router, server, etc.) myself, see what it outputs when I interact with it manually, then try to reconstruct that exact output when my Expect.pm script interacts with the (program, router, server, etc.) in the same way.

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