Automating Interactive Scripts

Owned by Chris Green
Last updated: Oct 03, 2023
1 min read

Sometimes there are installations which require user responses to certain questions. One example of this can be found when running the mysql_secure_installation command. It is possible to automate these responses when you want to have a database, like MySQL set up and ready to use as root.

To do this, we use expect.

According to the linux man page, expect is programmed dialogue which knows what is expected from the program and what the correct response should be.

Typically, Expect is run in a separate script with the first line of the script as:

#!/usr/local/bin/expect -<options>

However, it is possible to run an expect script within a regular bash script.

An expect script inside a normal bash script would be written as follows:

$FOO=(expect -c " expect \"<interactive prompt>\" send \"<response>\r\" ") echo "$FOO"

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