Expect.pm v1.12
===============

GREAT NEWS!  Expect should finally work under the cywin environment
for Windows NT!  All you need is the latest version of IO::Tty (0.05),
which has been severely enhanced and bugfixed.  Also, *BSD and HPUX
should work now.  Please refer to the IO::Tty documentation.

Expect requires IO::Tty and IO::Stty, also available from CPAN.
It is highly recommended that you also upgrade to the latest IO::Tty.
There is a Bundle::Expect available that installs everything for
you.

If you prefer manual installation, the usual

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

should work.  I finally started a simple testsuite for Expect, but
it doesn't really test anything deeper right now.  The problem is to
find some external program to use for generating reproducible output
that is available across all platforms.  Luckily, we can always use perl
itself...  Contributions to the testsuite are of course welcome.

It would probably be wise to read the docs on IO::Tty before doing a
make install with it (or at least when there are problems).  Note that
IO::Tty is very system-dependend.  I'm in the process to steal the
pty-creation code from the Tcl version of Expect, which should be much
more stable, but this may take a while (no free tuits at the moment).

The Expect for Perl module was inspired more by the functionality the
Tcl tool provides than any previous Expect-like tool such as Comm.pl
or chat2.pl.

The Tcl version of expect is a creation of Don Libes (libes@nist.gov).
The Tcl Expect home page is http://expect.nist.gov/.  Don has written
an excellent in-depth tutorial of Tcl/Expect, which is _Exploring
Expect_.  It is the O'reilly book with the monkey on the front.  Don has
several references to other articles on the Expect web page.

I try to stay as close to Tcl/Expect in interface and semantics
as possible (so I can refer questions to the Tcl/Expect docu).
Suggestions for improvement are always welcome.

There is now a FAQ section in the pod, complete with examples, so please
let me know if there's something you'd like to see answered there that
isn't.

There are two mailing lists available, expectperl-announce and
expectperl-discuss, at

  http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/expectperl-announce

and

  http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/expectperl-discuss


From the Changes file:
======================

! exp_Max_Accum didn't work for interact.

- removed soft_close() from DESTROY.  Being overly nice to a doomed
  process doesn't pay off.  Old behaviour is available via
  $Expect::Do_Soft_Close = 1;

! cleanup of log and exp_internal output

+ added various aliases for functions starting with 'exp_'

! moved FAQ and intro into the main pod as I got the impression
  that many users didn't bother to read all the documentation
  or didn't know that it was there.

+ added a hook for log_file: can be set to a code ref.


Thanks to everybody who wrote to me, either with bug reports or
enhancement suggestions!

Roland Giersig (maintainer of Expect.pm, IO::Pty, IO::Stty, Tie::Persistent)
RGiersig@cpan.org

2001-09-03