hey, i am trying to get the username from the system in expect

but the $ is a special character reserved for expect variables. so going

set username "[exec echo $USER]"

of course gives me errors. does anyone know the correct way to do this?

Rather than using $user why not use the "whoami" command.
set username "[exec whoami]"

hi Ihave a problem in my expect script

#!/usr/local/bin/expect
set User "updates"
set Password "updates"
set Prompt "ftp>"
set Host "ftp.freedomain.com"
set Yes "prompt"
set Local "/home/ryan/parsedlogs/"
#set Yehey "mput yehey*"
################################################# Connect to FTP
spawn "/home/ryan/parsedlogs"
spawn ftp $Host
################################################# Username
expect "Name (ftp.freedomain.com:ryan):"
send "$User\n"
################################################# Password
expect "Password:"
send "$Password\n"
################################################# Enter Command Option of FTP
#expect "$Prompt"
#send "passive\n"
expect "$Prompt"
send "$Yes\n"
expect "$Prompt"
send "hash\n"
################################################# Upload yeheylogs files
expect "$Prompt\n"
send "mput $Local*.*\r"
expect "$Prompt"
send "ls -al\n"
expect "$Prompt\n"
send "bye\n"

when i run this script it says
spawn /home/ryan/parsedlogs
couldn't execute "/home/ryan/parsedlogs": permission denied
while executing
"spawn "/home/ryan/parsedlogs""
(file "/home/ryan/scripts/ftptest.exp" line 10)

sk8guitar,
You can use (id -u) try to look at man id which can return you the user.

at your comand type id, you see your id, uid gid and etc.

try to modify it at your own preference.

hope it help

x2000koh