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Sharjeel
Asked: 2009-08-06 23:37:58 +0800 CST

Expect script does not print (cat ) a file on remote server

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I have an expect script which checks if a file exists on a remote server and then tries to print ( using cat) it if it does

For some reason the expect script ignores these commands.

send "if {[file exists "./abc.test"]} {cat ./abc.txt\r}"
linux unix bash tcl

3 Answers

  1. I have never used Expect, but your code sample...

    if {[file exists "./abc.test"]} {send "cat ./abc.txt\r"}

    ...seems to check for file existence on the machine expect runs on, not the remote one. So unless the script is being run on the remote server, it won't work.

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  2. Best Answer

    Here is what I did and it worked now

    cat /some/path/abc.txt 2> /dev/null

    This way, the file gets printed if it exists and does not throw an error if it doesn't.

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  3. Hm, you're probably doing things in a rather roundabout way.

    First, please describe your context:

    • Exactly how (complete command line) do you invoke this script?
    • How does it access the remote server? There is no remote access in the script you provide.

    Finally, what are you really trying to do? If you want to print a file on a remote system, it's probably easier to directly invoke ssh. Expect is meant for scripting programs which do not have a scripting language (such as simple ftp clients). It's needlessly complicated to use it with a command shell, which already has a powerful scripting language.

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