(Yes, this parallels that other thread)

A long, long time ago, I used Expect on Windows (either NT4 or XP) and was generally pretty happy with it. This was in a work/production environment.
I used a version found somewhere on the net that wasn't ActiveState. I
don't have the details in front of me, but I could probably find it on some backup laying around, if I did enough archaeology. This was all, of
course, 32-bit only stuff.

Around the same time, I tried the ActiveState version and didn't like it as much, even though ActiveState was definitely better known and thus more "boss-friendly".

I don't use Windows much anymore (and haven't done Expect under Windows
since I left that job), so this is largely moot/academic at this point for
me, but I have basically 3 questions regarding the state of the world at present:

1) Does anyone else remember the version that I can't quite remember?
I liked it and it worked well, but it *was* kind of "off-brand", if you
know what I mean. Is there any reason this version couldn't be used
today? Would this satisfy the OP of the other thread?

2) What is the current status of ActiveState Expect?

3) The other thread has several posts by David Gav(something)? Is he
associated with ActiveState or any other company that I may have heard
of?

Thanks for any help. As I said, this is mostly curiosity at this point,
but I'd be happy to have some answers.

--
Hindsight is (supposed to be) 2020.

Trumpers, don't make the same mistake twice.
Don't shoot yourself in the feet - and everywhere else - again!.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In article <108vne0$2rbct$[email protected]>,
David Gravereaux <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Kenny,

The original port of E4W was written by Gordon Chaffee in 1999 for Tcl 8.0 >https://web.archive.org/web/19980220232311/http://www.bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/expectnt.html

Thanks for jogging my memory. I was pretty sure it was Gordon <somebody>,
but couldn't quite remember. But that was definitely the version I used.

In 2003, I took his work, modified it quite a lot, and made my own port
for Active State that partially implements [interact] by keeping the
debugger in the extension, rather than being external (slave.exe) and
talking to it over pipes with VT100 escape sequences inserted to emulate
a stream. Internally, I got close, anyways.

Yeah, that was the one thing it lacked. It didn't do "interact".
But I was able to get useful work done even though lacking "interact".

...

I'm not as good at coding these days, but I'm having fun playing around.

Well, that's the important thing. Old programmers never die, they just ... fade away...

--
The randomly chosen signature file that would have appeared here is more than 4 lines long. As such, it violates one or more Usenet RFCs. In order to remain in compliance with said RFCs, the actual sig can be found at the following URL:
http://user.xmission.com/~gazelle/Sigs/Security

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi Kenny,

The original port of E4W was written by Gordon Chaffee in 1999 for Tcl 8.0 https://web.archive.org/web/19980220232311/http://www.bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/expectnt.html

In 2003, I took his work, modified it quite a lot, and made my own port
for Active State that partially implements [interact] by keeping the
debugger in the extension, rather than being external (slave.exe) and
talking to it over pipes with VT100 escape sequences inserted to emulate
a stream. Internally, I got close, anyways.

Conceptually, it could have been merged into the official tree, but
given the changes for windows, even on the generic side, were rather
deep. I talked about it with Jeffery, but felt a bit embarrassed to
even ask Don.

Today it lingers in "code rot" as I try to hack away at it. I'm
thankful that Jeffery Hobbs opened E4W in 2009 https://sourceforge.net/projects/expect/files/Expect%204%20Windows/

I'm not as good at coding these days, but I'm having fun playing around.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/30/2025 1:54 PM, Kenny McCormack wrote:

Well, that's the important thing. Old programmers never die, they just ... fade away...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBxMPqxJGqI

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In article <108vr0l$2s7gv$[email protected]>,
David Gravereaux <[email protected]> wrote:

On 8/30/2025 1:54 PM, Kenny McCormack wrote:

Well, that's the important thing. Old programmers never die, they just ... >> fade away...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBxMPqxJGqI

Good one!

--
So to cure the problem of arrogant incompetent rich people we should turn
the government over to an arrogant incompetent trust fund billionaire
who knows nothing about government and who has never held a job in his
entire spoiled life?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/31/2025 2:33 PM, David Gravereaux wrote:

The amount of bit twiddling involved taking the native windows console,
at the API call level of a chain of foreign processes and threads, instrumenting it there as an unconditional jmp, and essentially
converting it into a stream is ludicrous.  MS Windows was not meant to
work this way.

Detours looks promising.
https://github.com/microsoft/Detours/wiki

I'm working on it now https://github.com/davygrvy/expect4win/blob/b6464e8e9b43bfa2beecba485804e8056cdb7426/win/expWinConsoleDetourer.cpp#L135

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/31/2025 8:52 AM, saito wrote:

I am not familiar with this other version of Expect (nor with the "real" version, in any meaningful capacity, to be honest).  A little bit of searching the nets generated some links that describe it but nothing to download or test.

Don's "real" NIST paid-for Expect is @ https://sourceforge.net/projects/expect/files/Expect/

It only builds on unix-like systems. That is the version you get on
Ubuntu with 'sudo apt-get install expect'

Gordon Chaffe made a windows port in 1999 @ https://web.archive.org/web/19980220232311/http://www.bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/expectnt.html

I wrote a port based on Gordon's work, but as a real stubs compatible
extension for 8.4 in 2003 for ActiveState that is fully native (not cygwin).

It was not merged into the official tree.

In 2009, Jeffry Hobbs made the source public (with all the warts)@ https://sourceforge.net/projects/expect/files/Expect%204%20Windows/

I put that into my GitHub a number of months ago and have been messing
around with it toward getting it to work on WIN64 by taking out all the
warts.

https://github.com/davygrvy/expect4win

The amount of bit twiddling involved taking the native windows console,
at the API call level of a chain of foreign processes and threads, instrumenting it there as an unconditional jmp, and essentially
converting it into a stream is ludicrous. MS Windows was not meant to
work this way.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In article <1092g3j$3g2gh$[email protected]>,
David Gravereaux <[email protected]> wrote:

On 8/31/2025 2:33 PM, David Gravereaux wrote:

The amount of bit twiddling involved taking the native windows console,
at the API call level of a chain of foreign processes and threads,
instrumenting it there as an unconditional jmp, and essentially
converting it into a stream is ludicrous. MS Windows was not meant to
work this way.

Detours looks promising.
https://github.com/microsoft/Detours/wiki

I'm working on it now >https://github.com/davygrvy/expect4win/blob/b6464e8e9b43bfa2beecba485804e8056cdb7426/win/expWinConsoleDetourer.cpp#L135

Good to hear. Hope to see something working emerge (whenver it happens!)

Will it work on (64 bit) Windows 7? I have no interest in any version of Windows after 7.

--
Indeed, most .NET developers couldn't pass CS101 at a third-rate
community college.
- F. Russell -

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/31/2025 3:21 PM, Kenny McCormack wrote:

Will it work on (64 bit) Windows 7?

The Detours library is NT based only, so yes. It will be able to
instrument 32-bit apps, too

The Detours method won't work on Win95,98,ME

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/31/2025 3:44 PM, David Gravereaux wrote:

The Detours method won't work on Win95,98,ME

Tcl won't work on those either. Thank you :) https://core.tcl-lang.org/tips/doc/trunk/tip/487.md

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In article <1092j8d$3gsmg$[email protected]>,
David Gravereaux <[email protected]> wrote:

On 8/31/2025 3:21 PM, Kenny McCormack wrote:

Will it work on (64 bit) Windows 7?

The Detours library is NT based only, so yes. It will be able to
instrument 32-bit apps, too

The Detours method won't work on Win95,98,ME

Heh heh. I was a Win98 holdout for a long time, but even I'm not that old (anymore).

Right now, I have one XP and one Win7 (The rest are all Linux).

--
The coronavirus is the first thing, in his 74 pathetic years of existence,
that the orange menace has come into contact with, that he couldn't browbeat, bully, bullshit, bribe, sue, legally harrass, get Daddy to fix, get his siblings to bail him out of, or, if all else fails, simply wish it away.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/31/2025 3:21 PM, Kenny McCormack wrote:

Good to hear. Hope to see something working emerge (whenver it happens!)

Check this out
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/classic-vs-vt

a pseudo PTY after all?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

David,
thanks for your very welcomed work!
Eventually, you may consider to transfer your github to the TCL orphaned repository, were we try to collect half maintained gems:

https://github.com/tcltk-depot

You may get a member of the group. Many half retired Tcl gurus are there.

Take care,
Harald

Am 31.08.2025 um 23:33 schrieb David Gravereaux:

On 8/31/2025 8:52 AM, saito wrote:

I am not familiar with this other version of Expect (nor with the
"real" version, in any meaningful capacity, to be honest).  A little
bit of searching the nets generated some links that describe it but
nothing to download or test.

Don's "real" NIST paid-for Expect is @ https://sourceforge.net/projects/expect/files/Expect/

It only builds on unix-like systems.  That is the version you get on
Ubuntu with 'sudo apt-get install expect'

Gordon Chaffe made a windows port in 1999 @ https://web.archive.org/web/19980220232311/http://www.bmrc.berkeley.edu/ people/chaffee/expectnt.html

I wrote a port based on Gordon's work, but as a real stubs compatible extension for 8.4 in 2003 for ActiveState that is fully native (not
cygwin).

It was not merged into the official tree.

In 2009, Jeffry Hobbs made the source public (with all the warts)@ https://sourceforge.net/projects/expect/files/Expect%204%20Windows/

I put that into my GitHub a number of months ago and have been messing
around with it toward getting it to work on WIN64 by taking out all the warts.

https://github.com/davygrvy/expect4win

The amount of bit twiddling involved taking the native windows console,
at the API call level of a chain of foreign processes and threads, instrumenting it there as an unconditional jmp, and essentially
converting it into a stream is ludicrous.  MS Windows was not meant to
work this way.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In article <1091r34$3ab2o$[email protected]>,
saito <[email protected]> wrote:

On 8/30/2025 3:57 PM, Kenny McCormack wrote:

(Yes, this parallels that other thread)

...
Not sure if you mean me and my post from a couple of months ago on this >subject but it sounds similar.

Yes. It was you, posted July 3rd. Yes, that's 2 months ago...
(I don't read this group very often, so time goes by between times. My killfile is setup to select articles whose Subject: contains the word
"expect", since that is my primary area of interest in Tcl.)

2) What is the current status of ActiveState Expect?

The last paragraph on that page summarizes the current status of Expect
on Windows in some detail. Unfortunately, it seems to be abandon-ware at
this point.

True, but David G is working on it - including specifically a version in
which "interact" works. So, there is hope!

--
Christianity is not a religion.

- Rick C Hodgin -

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 9/1/2025 9:41 AM, saito wrote:

I think at one point he was trying to change ActiveState's mind as well
about fixing it for them.

I did see what was wrong early on around 2004. With DEP security
getting triggered for the executable code injection and all. It behaved
like a virus. It wasn't wrong. Detours is the way, not the system
debugger method with code injection.

I have the new framework started and it should shoehorn in with
excellent code reuse:

https://github.com/davygrvy/expect4win/blob/d4b028f95ede1458c3685d4815be59a29b5d3cbf/win/expWinSpawnChan.cpp#L134

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/31/2025 6:04 PM, David Gravereaux wrote:

On 8/31/2025 3:21 PM, Kenny McCormack wrote:

Good to hear.  Hope to see something working emerge (whenver it happens!)

Check this out https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/classic-vs-vt

a pseudo PTY after all?

Windows 10, build 16257 and later, including all versions of Windows 11
for these new flags for WriteConsole and ReadConsole:

ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_INPUT
ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING

exp_send_user can be cooked mode?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)