Perpetual Buffering
The -notransfer
flag prevents expect
from removing matching characters from the internal buffer. The characters can be matched repeatedly as long as the -notransfer
flag is associated with the pattern.
expect -notransfer pat
The -notransfer
flag is particularly useful for experimenting with patterns. You can drive a program up to a point where it loads up the internal buffer and then try various patterns against it again and again. For convenience, the -notransfer
flag can be abbreviated "-n
" when Expect is running interactively.
In the next chapter, I will show some additional debugging aids that can be usefully combined with the -notransfer
flag.
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