Automation and Testing of Character-graphic Programs
Don Libes · Software Practice and Experience · 1997
This paper describes a technique that allows automation and testing of character-graphic programs using existing public-domain tools. Specifically, Tcl, Tk, and Expect are augmented with a terminal emulator in order to build a screen representation in memory. This screen can be queried in a high-level way and the interaction can be further controlled based on the screen representation. One immediate use of this is to build a test suite for automating standards conformance of the interactive programs in POSIX 1003⋅2 (Interactive Shells and Utilities). This technique is portable and inexpensive. All the software described in this paper is free or in the public domain. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.