[Rohan Pall], on a nice Saturday afternoon on July 5th 2003 decided to play with [Expect] and automate checking his [IMAP] mail account.

I based this script on [Glenn Jackman]'s [POP3] mail checking [Expect] script [http://www.magma.ca/~glennj/tcl/checkpopmail.exp].  I just loaded [Expect] up for the first time 2 days ago, so you can figure that it is dead simple to use, once you know some [Tcl].

Now I just have to tell [cron] to run this script every so often, and I need to modify this script to pop up a box when I have new mail.  Or maybe use something like [TkDesk], or some other desktop agent.  I've got so many desktop tclets that something to tie it together would r0x0r.

Enjoy the summer -- [Tcl] yourself today!

'''Make sure the script is not readable by anyone else, your PASSWORD is in it!'''


  #!/usr/bin/expect -f

  #log_user 0    ;# hide interaction, i.e. do not display to stdout
  set timeout 10
  match_max 100000

  set server my.server.com
  set port 143
  set user {dude}
  set pass {32k$12!_a}

  spawn telnet $server $port
  expect {
    timeout {puts stdout "timeout while connecting to $server"; exit 1}
    "* OK"
  }

  send "a001 login $user $pass\r"
  expect {
    timeout {puts stdout "timed out after login"; exit 1}
    "a001 NO" {puts stdout "bad login"; exit 1}
    "a001 OK"
  }

  send "a002 examine inbox\r"
  expect {
    timeout {puts stdout "timed out after examining inbox"; exit 1}
    "a002 NO" {puts stdout "could not examine inbox"; exit 1}
    "a002 OK"
  }

  #parray expect_out

  set buffer_to_parse $expect_out(buffer)
  regexp {([0-9]+) RECENT} $buffer_to_parse -> new_msgs
  puts "new: $new_msgs"

  send "a003 logout\r"
  expect {
    timeout {puts stdout "timed out after logout"; exit 1}
    "a003 NO" {puts stdout "could not logout"; exit 1}
    "a003 OK"
  }

  exit





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[CL], intent on demonstrating that [many people who think they need Expect do not need Expect],
feels motivation to code a [pure-Tcl] example that almost as easily achieves the same effect--but
not enough motivation yet to turn away from other projects.
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[schlenk] It is quite simply to do it with the rudimentary IMAP4 client inside the Tcllib CVS tree.
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[DL] Yes, [CL] and [schlenk] are correct but not all is lost.  Drop an 'interact' in the middle of the script and it becomes a cute script for experimenting with an IMAP server interactively.  I do that a lot!  As far as solving the original problem (automating checking of mail account), I use [tkbiff].

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%| [Category Mail] | [Category Internet] | [Category Expect] |%
!!!!!!