[AOLSERVER] Expect in AOLserver?
I have an Expect script which I'm exec'ing from AOLserver. This works, and the inefficiency of forking doesn't really matter in this case. But it's annoying, as it means I can only communicate with the Expect script via command line arguments and stdin/stdout/stderr. I'd much rather just have the Expect Tcl API directly available in AOLserver. But is that in fact feasible? Is there any version of Expect which can be dynamically loaded into AOLserver (or plain tclsh for that matter), via 'package require', the modules list in AOLserver's config file, or some other such mechanism? For AOLserver 3.3, or 4.0? -- Andrew Piskorski [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.piskorski.com -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] Expect in AOLserver?
I haven't tried it from AS, but I always load Expect from within tclsh: this works for me: package require Expect If you are on Windows, then I think the Expect for windows is still a little shaky... On Sun, 2003-09-14 at 12:44, Andrew Piskorski wrote: I have an Expect script which I'm exec'ing from AOLserver. This works, and the inefficiency of forking doesn't really matter in this case. But it's annoying, as it means I can only communicate with the Expect script via command line arguments and stdin/stdout/stderr. I'd much rather just have the Expect Tcl API directly available in AOLserver. But is that in fact feasible? Is there any version of Expect which can be dynamically loaded into AOLserver (or plain tclsh for that matter), via 'package require', the modules list in AOLserver's config file, or some other such mechanism? For AOLserver 3.3, or 4.0? -- Andrew Piskorski [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.piskorski.com -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank. -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] Expect in AOLserver?
This should work with AOLserver 4.0 assuming the Expect package is thread-safe. - Nathan Brett Schwarz wrote on 9/14/03, 4:00 PM: package require Expect -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] Expect in AOLserver?
Andrew Piskorski wrote: I have an Expect script which I'm exec'ing from AOLserver. This works, and the inefficiency of forking doesn't really matter in this case. But it's annoying, as it means I can only communicate with the Expect script via command line arguments and stdin/stdout/stderr. I'd much rather just have the Expect Tcl API directly available in AOLserver. But is that in fact feasible? Is there any version of Expect which can be dynamically loaded into AOLserver (or plain tclsh for that matter), via 'package require', the modules list in AOLserver's config file, or some other such mechanism? For AOLserver 3.3, or 4.0? My guess is that you really should separate expect scripts from AOLserver. If you really have to, you can create a separate thread, communicate with it and have it do all the expect commands (to avoid some of thread safety :). Although it would be better to spawn another process and communicate via tcp/ip or perhaps using http (tclhttpd+expect should work quite nice :). I usually work with a separate thread, for example my antivirus scanner has a separate thread, which does [open |mks32] and communicates with it. -- WK -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] Expect in AOLserver?
Nathan Folkman writes: This should work with AOLserver 4.0 assuming the Expect package is thread-safe. Coincidentally, I recently tried this (and even loaded/used Expect in a separate thread). Aolserver crashed hard. I seem to recall that I tried several different things, including the latest versions of both Expect and Aolserver, but no luck. I recall searching around for any info on Expect thread safety, and someone (Don Libes?) said that they had gotten it (ie, a thread-safe implementation Expect) close, but never completed the work. In the end, I aborted and implemented what I needed (a port of legacy non-Aolserver code originally implemented using Expect) in Aolserver in a completely different way -- ie, rewrite. -Lane ___ Lane Wimberley 8303 N. MoPac, Suite A-300 Austin, TX 78759 Wayport, Inc.512.519.6195 (voice)512.519.6200 (fax) - The majority of men...are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and...are not accessible to reason, but only to authority. Arthur Schopenhauer: Supplements to the World as Will and Idea. -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] Expect in AOLserver?
I have an Expect script which I'm exec'ing from AOLserver. This works, and the inefficiency of forking doesn't really matter in this case. But it's annoying, as it means I can only communicate with the Expect script via command line arguments and stdin/stdout/stderr. I'd much rather just have the Expect Tcl API directly available in AOLserver. But is that in fact feasible? Is there any version of Expect which can be dynamically loaded into AOLserver (or plain tclsh for that matter), via 'package require', the modules list in AOLserver's config file, or some other such mechanism? For AOLserver 3.3, or 4.0? Expect is not a thread-safe extension. It would be easy to make thread-safe with large locks (which you could even do with the tcl level apis), but fine-grained thread-safety would be hard due to the type of unix APIs used. That said, you should be able to make it work, but I would recommend a pass through the APIs for gross thread-safety abuses first. Jeff Hobbs The Tcl Guy Senior Developer http://www.ActiveState.com/ Tcl Support and Productivity Solutions -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] Expect in AOLserver?
On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 04:51:38PM -0700, Jeff Hobbs wrote: Expect is not a thread-safe extension. It would be easy to make thread-safe with large locks (which you could even do with the tcl level apis), but fine-grained thread-safety would be hard due to the type of unix APIs used. That said, you should be able to make it work, but I would recommend a pass through the APIs for gross thread-safety abuses first. In that case, I won't be doing it, not right now anyway, as I don't anticipate using Expect much more than for this one thing I already have an exec solution for. But, it does sounds like something I might want to do sometime in the future, so: How sure are you that JUST adding mutex locks around chunks of Expect code would fix the thread-safety? Or would some of these locks likely need to be coordinated with AOLserver locks? AOLserver does some of its own internal mutex locking of non thread-safe library calls (maybe other resources too, I don't know), so I'd worry about Expect trying to call some of the same stuff, but not using the same lock... In which case the thread-safety problem should still be solvable, but noticeably more difficult, as AOLserver and Expect have to be made to share a lock. I've seen this before with other code. Actually, what is Tcl's mechanism for coordinating such locking across multiple C coded Tcl extensions? Does it have one? -- Andrew Piskorski [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.piskorski.com -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body of SIGNOFF AOLSERVER in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
