Automatically filling in answers to interactive shell command questions

[Jp Calderone]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 03:23:25PM -0700, Ted Weatherly wrote:
> Is it possible to use python to automatically fill in the answers to
> interactive shell command questions?  For example, I am using a shell
> command addperson that behaves as follows:
> 
>   > addperson
>   First Name: Ted
>   Birthday: 12/08/1977
>   Height: 6'0"
>   Location: San Francisco, CA
>   > 
> 
> I am prompted for "First Name: " and I enter "Ted".  I am prompted for
> "Birthday: " and I enter "12/08/1977".  Imagine doing this for 100
> people or more...it gets tiresome.
> 
> Assuming I can't change the addperson command to read data from a
> file, is there any way to use python to fill in the data for the
> expected questions?  Perhaps a different language would be better?
> 

  Ahh, but addperson already reads data from a file!  stdin!  Have you
tried:

    cat answer_file | addperson

  or even

    addperson < answer_file

  or, to keep it Python related,

    >>> import os
    >>> outf = os.popen('addperson', 'w')
    >>> inf = file('answer_file', 'r')
    >>> outf.write(inf.read())
    >>> inf.close()
    >>> outf.close()

  Jp

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