Doesn't work with bash shells? about nexpect

[indexzero]

Probably has to do with how read is interacting with this internally.

[mrmowgli]

Going through the Nexpect code looks like everything should be working...

I'm tempted to say this is actually a node child_process problem, but I'm still digging into getting this example to work using spawn or exec. So far it's leading me to believe that either the bash read is somehow bypassing stdout (perhaps it's on stderr?), bash creates a direct write to the terminal, or Node can't capture certain kinds of output.

[sam-github]

from man bash, for the read command

              -p prompt
                     Display  prompt on standard error, without a trailing newline, before attempting to
                     read any input.  The prompt is displayed only if input is coming from a terminal.

So, it seems you should not behaviour in nexpect to be same as when run interactively. nexpect would need overhaul to spawn in pseudo-tty, and Node.js doesn't support such capabilities natively, AFAICT.

[mrmowgli]

Ok, that certainly explains it.

I remember reading that there was some tty support, but don't know how to make node operate that way: Node TTY or this one to force tty.

Looks like I will be rewriting some bash scripts in node for now, until I figure this out :)

[sam-github]

The node APIs, and force tty are the opposite of what you want, you need node to be a pseudo tty master, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-TTY