Class spawn

This is the constructor. The command parameter may be a string that includes a command and any arguments to the command. For example:

   child = pexpect.spawn ('/usr/bin/ftp')
   child = pexpect.spawn ('/usr/bin/ssh user@example.com')
   child = pexpect.spawn ('ls -latr /tmp')

You may also construct it with a list of arguments like so:

   child = pexpect.spawn ('/usr/bin/ftp', [])
   child = pexpect.spawn ('/usr/bin/ssh', ['user@example.com'])
   child = pexpect.spawn ('ls', ['-latr', '/tmp'])

After this the child application will be created and will be ready to talk to. For normal use, see expect() and send() and sendline().

Remember that Pexpect does NOT interpret shell meta characters such as redirect, pipe, or wild cards (>, |, or *). This is a common mistake. If you want to run a command and pipe it through another command then you must also start a shell. For example:

   child = pexpect.spawn('/bin/bash -c "ls -l | grep LOG > log_list.txt"')
   child.expect(pexpect.EOF)

The second form of spawn (where you pass a list of arguments) is useful in situations where you wish to spawn a command and pass it its own argument list. This can make syntax more clear. For example, the following is equivalent to the previous example:

   shell_cmd = 'ls -l | grep LOG > log_list.txt'
   child = pexpect.spawn('/bin/bash', ['-c', shell_cmd])
   child.expect(pexpect.EOF)

The maxread attribute sets the read buffer size. This is maximum number of bytes that Pexpect will try to read from a TTY at one time. Setting the maxread size to 1 will turn off buffering. Setting the maxread value higher may help performance in cases where large amounts of output are read back from the child. This feature is useful in conjunction with searchwindowsize.

The searchwindowsize attribute sets the how far back in the incomming seach buffer Pexpect will search for pattern matches. Every time Pexpect reads some data from the child it will append the data to the incomming buffer. The default is to search from the beginning of the imcomming buffer each time new data is read from the child. But this is very inefficient if you are running a command that generates a large amount of data where you want to match The searchwindowsize does not effect the size of the incomming data buffer. You will still have access to the full buffer after expect() returns.

The logfile member turns on or off logging. All input and output will be copied to the given file object. Set logfile to None to stop logging. This is the default. Set logfile to sys.stdout to echo everything to standard output. The logfile is flushed after each write.

Example log input and output to a file:

   child = pexpect.spawn('some_command')
   fout = file('mylog.txt','w')
   child.logfile = fout

Example log to stdout:

   child = pexpect.spawn('some_command')
   child.logfile = sys.stdout

The logfile_read and logfile_send members can be used to separately log the input from the child and output sent to the child. Sometimes you don't want to see everything you write to the child. You only want to log what the child sends back. For example:

   child = pexpect.spawn('some_command')
   child.logfile_read = sys.stdout

To separately log output sent to the child use logfile_send:

   self.logfile_send = fout

The delaybeforesend helps overcome a weird behavior that many users were experiencing. The typical problem was that a user would expect() a "Password:" prompt and then immediately call sendline() to send the password. The user would then see that their password was echoed back to them. Passwords don't normally echo. The problem is caused by the fact that most applications print out the "Password" prompt and then turn off stdin echo, but if you send your password before the application turned off echo, then you get your password echoed. Normally this wouldn't be a problem when interacting with a human at a real keyboard. If you introduce a slight delay just before writing then this seems to clear up the problem. This was such a common problem for many users that I decided that the default pexpect behavior should be to sleep just before writing to the child application. 1/20th of a second (50 ms) seems to be enough to clear up the problem. You can set delaybeforesend to 0 to return to the old behavior. Most Linux machines don't like this to be below 0.03. I don't know why.

Note that spawn is clever about finding commands on your path. It uses the same logic that "which" uses to find executables.

If you wish to get the exit status of the child you must call the close() method. The exit or signal status of the child will be stored in self.exitstatus or self.signalstatus. If the child exited normally then exitstatus will store the exit return code and signalstatus will be None. If the child was terminated abnormally with a signal then signalstatus will store the signal value and exitstatus will be None. If you need more detail you can also read the self.status member which stores the status returned by os.waitpid. You can interpret this using os.WIFEXITED/os.WEXITSTATUS or os.WIFSIGNALED/os.TERMSIG.

Overrides: object.__init__

This makes sure that no system resources are left open. Python only garbage collects Python objects. OS file descriptors are not Python objects, so they must be handled explicitly. If the child file descriptor was opened outside of this class (passed to the constructor) then this does not close it.

This returns a human-readable string that represents the state of the object.

Overrides: object.__str__

This closes the connection with the child application. Note that calling close() more than once is valid. This emulates standard Python behavior with files. Set force to True if you want to make sure that the child is terminated (SIGKILL is sent if the child ignores SIGHUP and SIGINT).

This does nothing. It is here to support the interface for a File-like object.

This waits until the terminal ECHO flag is set False. This returns True if the echo mode is off. This returns False if the ECHO flag was not set False before the timeout. This can be used to detect when the child is waiting for a password. Usually a child application will turn off echo mode when it is waiting for the user to enter a password. For example, instead of expecting the "password:" prompt you can wait for the child to set ECHO off:

   p = pexpect.spawn ('ssh user@example.com')
   p.waitnoecho()
   p.sendline(mypassword)

If timeout is None then this method to block forever until ECHO flag is False.

This returns the terminal echo mode. This returns True if echo is on or False if echo is off. Child applications that are expecting you to enter a password often set ECHO False. See waitnoecho().

This sets the terminal echo mode on or off. Note that anything the child sent before the echo will be lost, so you should be sure that your input buffer is empty before you call setecho(). For example, the following will work as expected:

   p = pexpect.spawn('cat')
   p.sendline ('1234') # We will see this twice (once from tty echo and again from cat).
   p.expect (['1234'])
   p.expect (['1234'])
   p.setecho(False) # Turn off tty echo
   p.sendline ('abcd') # We will set this only once (echoed by cat).
   p.sendline ('wxyz') # We will set this only once (echoed by cat)
   p.expect (['abcd'])
   p.expect (['wxyz'])

The following WILL NOT WORK because the lines sent before the setecho will be lost:

   p = pexpect.spawn('cat')
   p.sendline ('1234') # We will see this twice (once from tty echo and again from cat).
   p.setecho(False) # Turn off tty echo
   p.sendline ('abcd') # We will set this only once (echoed by cat).
   p.sendline ('wxyz') # We will set this only once (echoed by cat)
   p.expect (['1234'])
   p.expect (['1234'])
   p.expect (['abcd'])
   p.expect (['wxyz'])

This reads at most size characters from the child application. It includes a timeout. If the read does not complete within the timeout period then a TIMEOUT exception is raised. If the end of file is read then an EOF exception will be raised. If a log file was set using setlog() then all data will also be written to the log file.

If timeout is None then the read may block indefinitely. If timeout is -1 then the self.timeout value is used. If timeout is 0 then the child is polled and if there was no data immediately ready then this will raise a TIMEOUT exception.

The timeout refers only to the amount of time to read at least one character. This is not effected by the 'size' parameter, so if you call read_nonblocking(size=100, timeout=30) and only one character is available right away then one character will be returned immediately. It will not wait for 30 seconds for another 99 characters to come in.

This is a wrapper around os.read(). It uses select.select() to implement the timeout.

This reads at most "size" bytes from the file (less if the read hits EOF before obtaining size bytes). If the size argument is negative or omitted, read all data until EOF is reached. The bytes are returned as a string object. An empty string is returned when EOF is encountered immediately.

This reads and returns one entire line. A trailing newline is kept in the string, but may be absent when a file ends with an incomplete line. Note: This readline() looks for a \r\n pair even on UNIX because this is what the pseudo tty device returns. So contrary to what you may expect you will receive the newline as \r\n. An empty string is returned when EOF is hit immediately. Currently, the size argument is mostly ignored, so this behavior is not standard for a file-like object. If size is 0 then an empty string is returned.

This reads until EOF using readline() and returns a list containing the lines thus read. The optional "sizehint" argument is ignored.

This calls write() for each element in the sequence. The sequence can be any iterable object producing strings, typically a list of strings. This does not add line separators There is no return value.

This sends a string to the child process. This returns the number of bytes written. If a log file was set then the data is also written to the log.

This is like send(), but it adds a line feed (os.linesep). This returns the number of bytes written.

This sends a control character to the child such as Ctrl-C or Ctrl-D. For example, to send a Ctrl-G (ASCII 7):

   child.sendcontrol('g')

See also, sendintr() and sendeof().

This sends an EOF to the child. This sends a character which causes the pending parent output buffer to be sent to the waiting child program without waiting for end-of-line. If it is the first character of the line, the read() in the user program returns 0, which signifies end-of-file. This means to work as expected a sendeof() has to be called at the beginning of a line. This method does not send a newline. It is the responsibility of the caller to ensure the eof is sent at the beginning of a line.

This sends a SIGINT to the child. It does not require the SIGINT to be the first character on a line.

This forces a child process to terminate. It starts nicely with SIGHUP and SIGINT. If "force" is True then moves onto SIGKILL. This returns True if the child was terminated. This returns False if the child could not be terminated.

This waits until the child exits. This is a blocking call. This will not read any data from the child, so this will block forever if the child has unread output and has terminated. In other words, the child may have printed output then called exit(); but, technically, the child is still alive until its output is read.

This tests if the child process is running or not. This is non-blocking. If the child was terminated then this will read the exitstatus or signalstatus of the child. This returns True if the child process appears to be running or False if not. It can take literally SECONDS for Solaris to return the right status.

This sends the given signal to the child application. In keeping with UNIX tradition it has a misleading name. It does not necessarily kill the child unless you send the right signal.

This compiles a pattern-string or a list of pattern-strings. Patterns must be a StringType, EOF, TIMEOUT, SRE_Pattern, or a list of those. Patterns may also be None which results in an empty list (you might do this if waiting for an EOF or TIMEOUT condition without expecting any pattern).

This is used by expect() when calling expect_list(). Thus expect() is nothing more than:

    cpl = self.compile_pattern_list(pl)
    return self.expect_list(cpl, timeout)

If you are using expect() within a loop it may be more efficient to compile the patterns first and then call expect_list(). This avoid calls in a loop to compile_pattern_list():

    cpl = self.compile_pattern_list(my_pattern)
    while some_condition:
       ...
       i = self.expect_list(clp, timeout)
       ...

This seeks through the stream until a pattern is matched. The pattern is overloaded and may take several types. The pattern can be a StringType, EOF, a compiled re, or a list of any of those types. Strings will be compiled to re types. This returns the index into the pattern list. If the pattern was not a list this returns index 0 on a successful match. This may raise exceptions for EOF or TIMEOUT. To avoid the EOF or TIMEOUT exceptions add EOF or TIMEOUT to the pattern list. That will cause expect to match an EOF or TIMEOUT condition instead of raising an exception.

If you pass a list of patterns and more than one matches, the first match in the stream is chosen. If more than one pattern matches at that point, the leftmost in the pattern list is chosen. For example:

   # the input is 'foobar'
   index = p.expect (['bar', 'foo', 'foobar'])
   # returns 1 ('foo') even though 'foobar' is a "better" match

Please note, however, that buffering can affect this behavior, since input arrives in unpredictable chunks. For example:

   # the input is 'foobar'
   index = p.expect (['foobar', 'foo'])
   # returns 0 ('foobar') if all input is available at once,
   # but returs 1 ('foo') if parts of the final 'bar' arrive late

After a match is found the instance attributes 'before', 'after' and 'match' will be set. You can see all the data read before the match in 'before'. You can see the data that was matched in 'after'. The re.MatchObject used in the re match will be in 'match'. If an error occurred then 'before' will be set to all the data read so far and 'after' and 'match' will be None.

If timeout is -1 then timeout will be set to the self.timeout value.

A list entry may be EOF or TIMEOUT instead of a string. This will catch these exceptions and return the index of the list entry instead of raising the exception. The attribute 'after' will be set to the exception type. The attribute 'match' will be None. This allows you to write code like this:

       index = p.expect (['good', 'bad', pexpect.EOF, pexpect.TIMEOUT])
       if index == 0:
           do_something()
       elif index == 1:
           do_something_else()
       elif index == 2:
           do_some_other_thing()
       elif index == 3:
           do_something_completely_different()

instead of code like this:

       try:
           index = p.expect (['good', 'bad'])
           if index == 0:
               do_something()
           elif index == 1:
               do_something_else()
       except EOF:
           do_some_other_thing()
       except TIMEOUT:
           do_something_completely_different()

These two forms are equivalent. It all depends on what you want. You can also just expect the EOF if you are waiting for all output of a child to finish. For example:

       p = pexpect.spawn('/bin/ls')
       p.expect (pexpect.EOF)
       print p.before

If you are trying to optimize for speed then see expect_list().

This takes a list of compiled regular expressions and returns the index into the pattern_list that matched the child output. The list may also contain EOF or TIMEOUT (which are not compiled regular expressions). This method is similar to the expect() method except that expect_list() does not recompile the pattern list on every call. This may help if you are trying to optimize for speed, otherwise just use the expect() method. This is called by expect(). If timeout==-1 then the self.timeout value is used. If searchwindowsize==-1 then the self.searchwindowsize value is used.

This is similar to expect(), but uses plain string matching instead of compiled regular expressions in 'pattern_list'. The 'pattern_list' may be a string; a list or other sequence of strings; or TIMEOUT and EOF.

This call might be faster than expect() for two reasons: string searching is faster than RE matching and it is possible to limit the search to just the end of the input buffer.

This method is also useful when you don't want to have to worry about escaping regular expression characters that you want to match.

This is the common loop used inside expect. The 'searcher' should be an instance of searcher_re or searcher_string, which describes how and what to search for in the input.

See expect() for other arguments, return value and exceptions.

This returns the terminal window size of the child tty. The return value is a tuple of (rows, cols).

This sets the terminal window size of the child tty. This will cause a SIGWINCH signal to be sent to the child. This does not change the physical window size. It changes the size reported to TTY-aware applications like vi or curses -- applications that respond to the SIGWINCH signal.

This gives control of the child process to the interactive user (the human at the keyboard). Keystrokes are sent to the child process, and the stdout and stderr output of the child process is printed. This simply echos the child stdout and child stderr to the real stdout and it echos the real stdin to the child stdin. When the user types the escape_character this method will stop. The default for escape_character is ^]. This should not be confused with ASCII 27 -- the ESC character. ASCII 29 was chosen for historical merit because this is the character used by 'telnet' as the escape character. The escape_character will not be sent to the child process.

You may pass in optional input and output filter functions. These functions should take a string and return a string. The output_filter will be passed all the output from the child process. The input_filter will be passed all the keyboard input from the user. The input_filter is run BEFORE the check for the escape_character.

Note that if you change the window size of the parent the SIGWINCH signal will not be passed through to the child. If you want the child window size to change when the parent's window size changes then do something like the following example:

   import pexpect, struct, fcntl, termios, signal, sys
   def sigwinch_passthrough (sig, data):
       s = struct.pack("HHHH", 0, 0, 0, 0)
       a = struct.unpack('hhhh', fcntl.ioctl(sys.stdout.fileno(), termios.TIOCGWINSZ , s))
       global p
       p.setwinsize(a[0],a[1])
   p = pexpect.spawn('/bin/bash') # Note this is global and used in sigwinch_passthrough.
   signal.signal(signal.SIGWINCH, sigwinch_passthrough)
   p.interact()

This method is no longer supported or allowed. I don't like getters and setters without a good reason.