I couldn't find any information on that "TBterm" application, so I'll have to ask more questions.
I really want to spawn a xterm, because the TBterm cmd will pop up a xterm window with special setting.
What kind of special settings are specified in xterm spawned by TBterm? Does it spawn an xterm when run in another terminal?
how to open a process of "TBterm" backgroundly
So, you need to run TBterm in background (with no visible terminal), or not in background, but in an xterm?
I'll try to solve the problem as I understand it now, using sh as an interactive application and "ls" as a command:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Expect;
print("STDIN is not a terminal, running xterm\n"), exec ('xterm', '-e'
+, $^X, $0, @ARGV) unless -t STDIN;
print "Surely running in a terminal\n";
my $expect = Expect::->spawn("/bin/sh") or die "bash: $!\n";
$expect->expect(1,"\$ "); # expect a command line prompt
$expect->send("ls\n");
$expect->expect(1,"ls\r\n"); # sh echoes the entered command, so I hav
+e to expect() it back
# need to play with $expect->slave->stty() to get rid of \r
$expect->expect(1,"\$ "); # expect another command line prompt meaning
+ that the command succeeded
my $result = $expect->before(); # catch everything in between the echo
+ed "ls" and new prompt
$expect->send("exit\n"); # terminate the shell properly
$expect->soft_close;
print "Gathered output: BEGIN\n$result\nEND\n";
