When Don first created [Expect], he assumed other languages would
incorporate bindings relatively quickly.  It's a testimony to the
package's polish that no substantial efforts were made with other
language bindings for many years; it's because his Expect has
seemed so perfect, not
for any lack of need other languages have.

By 2000, though, unripe Expect-like facilities were available
for such languages as [Perl] and [Python].  In contrast to the
situation for [Tk], other languages have '''not''' created Expect
modules by linking against Don's libraries; instead, they've
written "from scratch" in more language-specific fashion.

Python has several Expect initiatives (just as it has a plethora of
Web servers, GUI toolkits, and so on).  Most advanced appears to be
Pexpect [http://sourceforge.net/projects/pexpect/] (but is it
''narrow-sense'' "pure-Python"?).








Expect.pm [http://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Expect/]

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How does the programming power of Tcl/Expect compare to that of
the Expect modules of other languages?  This comparison is far
more difficult to explain than might first appear; full understanding
involves several subtleties.  Here are the highlights:
   * Tcl/Expect can do anything the others can do.
   * Tcl/Expect is more mature, and, in particular, better-behaved across a range of Unixes.
   * Tcl/Expect has exceptionally interesting and powerful channel-processing capabilities, and event-oriented ones in particular, that other Expects don't try attempt.  ''However'', only a small minority of Expect programmers ever use these.

[[More detail.]]
[[See essay on "[Most programmers don't know what Expect can do for them]".]]












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[Category Expect]