Regression Testing and Conformance Testing Interactive Programs

Testing interactive programs, by its nature, requires interaction — usually by real people. Such testing is an expensive process and hence rarely done. Some interactive tools can use used non-interactively to a limited extent, and are often tested only this way. Purely interactive programs are rarely tested in any systematic way.

This paper describes testing of interactive line and character-oriented programs via Expect. An immediate use of this is to build a test suite for automating standards conformance of all of the interactive programs in POSIX 1003.2a (interactive shells and tools), something which has not yet been accomplished by any means.