pexpect: howto dump all content from child “as is”?

Question

We have some strange setup on our "shared" server that will not remember my git password for certain situations. I tried hard to fix the real issue; but at some point I gave up and created this python script:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
pass4worder: a simply python script that runs a custom command; and "expects" that command to ask for a password.
The script will send a custom password - until the command comes back with EOF.
"""

import getpass
import pexpect
import sys

def main():
    if len(sys.argv) == 1:
      print("pass4worder.py ERROR: at least one argument (the command to run) is required!")
      sys.exit(1)

    command = " ".join(sys.argv[1:])
    print('Command to run: <{}>'.format(command))
    password = getpass.getpass("Enter the password to send: ")

    child = pexpect.spawn(command)
    print(child.readline)
    counter = 0

    while True:
        try:
            expectAndSendPassword(child, password)
            counter = logAndIncreaseCounter(counter)
        except pexpect.EOF:
            print("Received EOF - exiting now!")
            print(child.before)
            sys.exit(0)


def expectAndSendPassword(child, password):
    child.expect("Password .*")
    print(child.before)
    child.sendline(password)


def logAndIncreaseCounter(counter):
    print("Sent password ... count: {}".format(counter))
    return counter + 1

main()

This solution does the job; but I am not happy about how those prints look like; example:

> pass4worder.py git pull
Command to run: <git pull>
Enter the password to send: 
<bound method SpawnBase.readline of <pexpect.pty_spawn.spawn object at 0x7f6b0f5ed780>>
Received EOF - exiting now!
b'Already up-to-date.\r\n'

I would rather prefer something like:

Already up-to-date
Received EOF - exiting now!

In other words: I am looking for a way so that pexect simply prints everything "as is" to stdout ... while still doing its job.

Is that possible?

(any other hints regarding my script are welcome too)

Answer 1

1. child.readline is a function so I think you actually wanted print(child.readline() ) .
2. Change print(child.before) to print(child.before.decode() ) . bytes.decode() converts bytes ( b'string' ) to str .