scp command behaves differently when used with expect utility

Question

expect -c 'spawn scp -C -o CompressionLevel=9 ~/partFiles/* [email protected]:/export/home/abc/; sleep 10; expect password; send "secretPassword\n";interact'

throws - ~/partFiles/*: No such file or directory

Just

scp -C -o CompressionLevel=9 ~/partFiles/* [email protected]:/export/home/abc/

however, works perfectly.

Why? How to fix this?

Solution 1

I think the ~ and * are expanded by the shell, but I bet expect invokes scp directly, bypassing the shell so those don't get expanded. You could try spawning sh -c the scp command.

If it's an option, it might also just be easier to share your key with the server though so you don't need expect for this at all.

Using the sh technique the command will end up looking like:

expect -c 'spawn sh -c "scp -C -o CompressionLevel=9 ~/partFiles/* [email protected]:/export/home/abc/"; sleep 10; expect password; send "secretPassword\n";interact'

Solution 2

An alternative to Eric's good answer: Tcl can do glob expansion

expect <<'END_EXPECT'
    set timeout -1      # use this instead of sleep
    set files [glob -nocomplain ~/partFiles/*]
    if {[llength $files]} {
        spawn scp -C -o CompressionLevel=9 {*}$files [email protected]:/export/home/abc/
        expect password
        send "secretPassword\r"
        expect eof
    }
END_EXPECT

Comments

[Tomas Hromnik]

I didn't get it. What did you mean by You could try spawning sh -c the scp command. I am a little new to all this. Would you kindly explain?

[Tomas Hromnik]

But thanks for the answer.

[Eric Renouf]

You have quotes around the password, which close the quotes for the sh -c You'll need to escape those to use this solution

[G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica']

Actually, I think the problem now is that the OP needs " after /export/home/rgh/; i.e., at the end of the scp command.

[Tomas Hromnik]

Did't work. I tried ` expect -c 'spawn sh -c "scp -C -o CompressionLevel=9 ~/partFiles/* [email protected]:/export/home/rgh/; sleep 10; expect password; send \"password\n\";interact"'`

[Eric Renouf]

@G-Man is right, you want the sh -c to only be quoting the scp command itself, the rest are expect commands, not sh ones

[Eric Renouf]

I just updated my answer with that command line too, glad it worked, and thanks again to @G-Man for that last push for the quoting help

[Tomas Hromnik]

yes, thanks a lot. The correct command should be: ` expect -c 'spawn sh -c "scp -C -o CompressionLevel=9 ~/partFiles/* [email protected]:/export/home/abc/"; sleep 10; expect password; send "passowrd\n";interact'`