--- ler762@gmail.com wrote: From: Lee <ler762@gmail.com>

I have a file with 1000s of devices and another file with a list of commands. The program issues all commands for a device and then moves on to the next one using nested loops. In the debug I see the "spawn_id expNN" (where NN is a number that, I believe is representative of the number of file descriptors used in the system) increment only when a device does not respond. As long as a device responds before the timeout period I see the expNN number does not increase. As soon as a device doesn't respond the expNN count goes up and I can't figure out why. Once I hit a certain expNN the <snip>

:: 'close $spawn_id' is wrong, so maybe that's it? :: man expect :: close [-slave] [-onexec 0|1] [-i spawn_id] :: closes the connection to the current process. :: ... The -i :: flag declares the :: process to close corresponding to the named :: spawn_id. <.. snip ..> ---------------------------------------- I hand typed the close stuff in the email with just 'close spawn_id'. I did the -i in previous iterations, but saw no difference. Maybe I should try more. I saw the 'close' alone a lot on Stackexchange a lot,so I was copying those in this iteration. I also should have read the man page more than I did, so a face slap to myself. :: No matter whether the connection is closed :: implicitly or explicitly, you should call wait to :: clear up the corresponding kernel process slot. :: close does not call wait since there is no guarantee :: that closing a process connection will cause it to :: exit. See wait below for more info. :: The eof and timeout cases are basically :: { catch {close}; catch {wait}; } I always used wait after close and need to look into those above. Maybe they close it different somehow. :: get rancid from here... and take a look at clogin... I'm going to be looking for a new job and want to up my skills, in case I get a chance to do the SDN/NFV stuff, which I read requires coding skills, so this is also an exercise toward that. Plus it's fun. I had already done this in PERL, but, even though we have PERL, we are not allowed to download modules here. So, I'm redoing it in Expect. I thought someone would say a "oh just <blah, blah> and you're done" type of response. Thanks a lot from everyone private and on the list. I'll post for the archives if I find the answer. scott