Years ago I was automating control of 3rd party WiFi devices, many of which presented a console which would be a much more reliable means of controlling the dev

Years ago I was automating control of 3rd party WiFi devices, many of which presented a console which would be a much more reliable means of controlling the device than trying to hack the web UIs of the time. I was using Tcl mostly running on Windows, and the Expect library for some reason had tremendous lag, or maybe it was a paid extension from ActiveState, I can’t remember the exact reason for not using it... So I decided to just reimplement my own ‘expect’ command using native Tcl and a socket with just enough knowledge of Telnet control codes to get a prompt to appear. What amazed me was how few lines of code it took to implement a fully functional Expect, and how useful it was as a means of structuring the automation, specifically around timing when to send inputs, parsing outputs, and confirming an action completed. I’ll try to dig up the old code and post it on Github...