[Expect] seems to be particularly prone to the situation that a newcomer writes a script, doesn't get the result he or she expects, and then appears to be completely at a loss as to what to do next. This page dissolves that paralysis. Chapter 18 of [BOOK Exploring Expect] is devoted to "Debugging Scripts". One of the commonest complaints is, "... and that's the pattern I wrote, but Expect isn't doing anything ..." This is often a symptom of a failure to expect the character stream Expect actually sees. A good place to begin, therefore, is often simply to change expect myscript.exp to expect -d myscript.exp The latter invocation provides abundant information about, among other things, the output Expect tries to match. Study of -d reports frequently suffices to solve otherwise-thorny problems. "[What debugging tools are available to a Tcl programmer]" includes several outstanding tips. [[exp_internal; Chapters 7, 9, 18, and page 531; ...]] ---- [[Explain crucial role of [autoexpect] (but see mention of interact below). Have beginners start with it.]] [[Pick appropriate references from FAQ.]] ---- ''[escargo]'' - What I have found useful included '''log_file''' and '''log_user'''. ---- [[Without doubt, the most useful tool for debugging expect itself is "exp_internal". It's boolean. It tells you what you got, no matter what you "expect"ed.]] ---- [[Explain importance of inserting [[sleep 1]] before password transmission, when all else fails.]] ---- In [clt], Don once wrote, "Try changing ... to [interact]. If you can do the interaction yourself, then it's just a matter of getting the [scripting] correct." ---- "Debugging Expect" [http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=9953/ur0601d/] "[Expect's frequently-made mistakes]" ---- [[Explain [exp_internal].]] ---- [Category Debugging] | [Category Expect]