Mailing List Archive

Scripting Telnet
Hello all,

I've accepted a project and I think I can use Python for part of it.

The project is moving data collected in a warehouse management system
into a proprietary, legacy CHUI application. The information is to be
processed hourly by a cron job under HPUX. Most of the legacy app
source code is available, but there are some black boxes in there I
can't get at. The app doesn't like standard input redirection, but will
run in a telnet session.

My choices appear to be 1) write a utility in the native app's
environment the mimics the result set of the current app (and I _really_
don't want to wade through that crap to figure it out); or 2) script the
input requirements and feed the application while it runs (I've done
this for smaller projects using VB sendkeys).

I feel that python ought to be good for this, and I'm hoping you'll
point me to the appropriate modules to look into or techniques to use.
I did a little browsing through dejanews and saw a reference to perl's
expect that looks like it does this kind of work, so maybe there's a
python tool too?

Trying-to-get-paid-and-learn-more-python-at-it-ly y'rs,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile@fenx.com
-------------------
Scripting Telnet [ In reply to ]
Emile van Sebille wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I've accepted a project and I think I can use Python for part of it.
>
> The project is moving data collected in a warehouse management system
> into a proprietary, legacy CHUI application. The information is to be
> processed hourly by a cron job under HPUX. Most of the legacy app
> source code is available, but there are some black boxes in there I
> can't get at. The app doesn't like standard input redirection, but will
> run in a telnet session.
>
> My choices appear to be 1) write a utility in the native app's
> environment the mimics the result set of the current app (and I _really_
> don't want to wade through that crap to figure it out); or 2) script the
> input requirements and feed the application while it runs (I've done
> this for smaller projects using VB sendkeys).
>
> I feel that python ought to be good for this, and I'm hoping you'll
> point me to the appropriate modules to look into or techniques to use.
> I did a little browsing through dejanews and saw a reference to perl's
> expect that looks like it does this kind of work,so maybe there's a
> python tool too?
>
> Trying-to-get-paid-and-learn-more-python-at-it-ly y'rs,
>

Well, the tcl based expect is probably the most appropriate tool for such a
thing, but there is a pythonized version(s) of it as well. The one I can
think of is ExpectPy, (http://www1.shore.net/~arcege/python/ExpectPy/), but
I seem to remember seeing at least one other one.
Scripting Telnet [ In reply to ]
In article <37606A0D.6332A9C2@horvath.com>,
Bob Horvath <bob@horvath.com> wrote:
.
.
.
>Well, the tcl based expect is probably the most appropriate tool for such a
>thing, but there is a pythonized version(s) of it as well. The one I can
>think of is ExpectPy, (http://www1.shore.net/~arcege/python/ExpectPy/), but
>I seem to remember seeing at least one other one.
>

You're probably thinking of <URL:ftp://ftp.bbn.com/pub/timo/python/exploop.py>.
--

Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird@NeoSoft.com +1 281 996 8546 FAX
Scripting Telnet [ In reply to ]
Once upon a time there was a Python solution called PIPE (for Python=20
Interactive Process Enabler), put together by John Croix. I've got=20
version 0.1, but it's dated 1997.

Did this project go anywhere? I did a quick search of python.org but=20
didn't find anything.

On 6/11/99, 11:15:38 AM, claird@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Cameron Laird)=20
wrote regarding Re: Scripting Telnet:

> Bob Horvath <bob@horvath.com> wrote:
> .
> >Well, the tcl based expect is probably the most appropriate tool for =

such a
> >thing, but there is a pythonized version(s) of it as well. The one I=
=20
can
> >think of is ExpectPy,=20
(http://www1.shore.net/~arcege/python/ExpectPy/), but
> >I seem to remember seeing at least one other one.
> >

> You're probably thinking of <URL:
ftp://ftp.bbn.com/pub/timo/python/exploop.py>.