Hello,

I am trying to write a linux script that would launch a program then the program itself has its own command prompt. Once the program starts I need to issue some commands in the program's prompt to get the program running.

My main question is, is it possible to write a script that will start the program, then input specific commands for that program?

I need to do this repeatedly, start program, load data set, run many commands then quit, restart program then load new dataset and so on. A real pain and very time consuming.

Thanks in advance

it's possible. When your new program starts up it will connect itself to an input device in /dev (probably something like /dev/ttyS2) etc. You're script can then open that device and begin writing to it like a file.

however, are you sure that the app your starting cannot recieve stuff through piping? (this would be way easier).

ie ... when I execute 'ls | grep jason | less' the system automatically feeds the output of 'ls' into 'grep' and feeds the output of 'grep' into 'less'.

jpbarto

Hi you suggestion was a great help.

did not realize that I could use piping for this program. but I guess you can use piping for almost any program.

This will speed up things a lot. I can just make the script, let it run before I go home and by the time I come back it should be all done!!

Thanks so much!!

not a problem ... and if you are unfamiliar with piping you may find it very useful to find a 'bash scripting' howto out there ... there are MANY very handy tools available to you that can probably help you in many other areas as well.

most how-tos can be found at The Linux Documentation Project (www.tldp.org)

glad to be of help,
jpbarto

If you can not do this using pipes, as jpbarto suggested, because the program is interactive, then there's the "expect" utility. With this you can program input for interactive programs.
See "man expect" from more info.