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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | INVOCATION | KEYWORDS | OVERVIEW OF KEYWORDS | NOTES | SEE ALSO | BUGS | AUTHOR | COLOPHON |
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RUNSCRIPT(1) General Commands Manual RUNSCRIPT(1)
runscript - script interpreter for minicom
runscript scriptname [logfile [homedir]]
runscript is a simple script interpreter that can be called from
within the minicom communications program to automate tasks like
logging in to a Unix system or your favorite BBS.
The program expects a script name and optionally a filename and
the user's home directory as arguments, and it expects that it's
input and output are connected to the "remote end", the system you
are connecting to. All messages from runscript meant for the local
screen are directed to the stderr output. All this is
automatically taken care of if you run it from minicom. The
logfile and home directory parameters are only used to tell the
log command the name of the logfile and where to write it. If the
homedir is omitted, runscript uses the directory found in the
$HOME environment variable. If also the logfile name is omitted,
the log commands are ignored.
Runscript recognizes the following commands:
expect send goto gosub return !< !
exit print set inc dec if timeout
verbose sleep break call log
send <string>
<string> is sent to the modem. It is followed by a '\r'.
<string> can be:
- regular text, e.g. 'send hello'
- text enclosed in quotes, e.g. 'send "hello world"'
Within <string> the following sequences are recognized:
\n - newline
\r - carriage return
\a - bell
\b - backspace
\c - don't send the default '\r'.
\f - formfeed
\^ - the ^ character
\o - send character o (o is an octal number)
Control characters can be used in the string with the ^
prefix (^A to ^Z, ^[, ^ ^], ^^ and ^_). If you need to send
the ^ character, you must prefix it with the \ escape
character.
Octal characters are either four-digit or delimited by a non-
digit character, e.g. the null character may be sent with
\0000 and 'send 1234' is equivalent to 'send \0061234'.
Also $(environment_variable) can be used, for example
$(TERM). Minicom passes three special environment variables:
$(LOGIN), which is the username, $(PASS), which is the
password, as defined in the proper entry of the dialing
directory, and $(TERMLIN) which is the number of actual
terminal lines on your screen (that is, the statusline
excluded).
print <string>
Prints <string> to the local screen. Default followed by
'\r\n'. See the description of 'send' above.
label:
Declares a label (with the name 'label') to use with goto or
gosub.
goto <label>
Jump to another place in the program.
gosub <label>
Jumps to another place in the program. When the statement
'return' is encountered, control returns to the statement
after the gosub. Gosub's can be nested.
return
Return from a gosub.
! <command>
Runs a shell for you in which 'command' is executed. On
return, the variable '$?' is set to the exit status of this
command, so you can subsequently test it using 'if'.
!< <command>
Runs a shell for you in which 'command' is executed. The
stdout output of the command execution will be sent to the
modem. On return, the variable '$?' is set to the exit status
of this command, so you can subsequently test it using 'if'.
exit [value]
Exit from "runscript" with an optional exit status. (default
1)
set <variable> <value>
Sets the value of <variable> (which is a single letter a-z)
to the value <value>. If <variable> does not exist, it will
be created. <value> can be a integer value or another
variable.
inc <variable>
Increments the value of <variable> by one.
dec <variable>
Decrements the value of <variable> by one.
if <value> <operator> <value> <statement>
Conditional execution of <statement>. <operator> can be <, >,
!= or =. Eg, 'if a > 3 goto exitlabel'.
timeout <value>
Sets the global timeout. By default, 'runscript' will exit
after 120 seconds. This can be changed with this command.
Warning: this command acts differently within an 'expect'
statement, but more about that later.
verbose <on|off>
By default, this is 'on'. That means that anything that is
being read from the modem by 'runscript', gets echoed to the
screen. This is so that you can see what 'runscript' is
doing.
sleep <value>
Suspend execution for <value> seconds.
expect
expect {
pattern [statement]
pattern [statement]
[timeout <value> [statement] ]
....
}
The most important command of all. Expect keeps reading from
the input until it reads a pattern that matches one of the
specified ones. If expect encounters an optional statement
after that pattern, it will execute it. Otherwise the default
is to just break out of the expect. 'pattern' is a string,
just as in 'send' (see above). Normally, expect will timeout
in 60 seconds and just exit, but this can be changed with the
timeout command.
break
Break out of an 'expect' statement. This is normally only
useful as argument to 'timeout' within an expect, because the
default action of timeout is to exit immediately.
call <scriptname>
Transfers control to another script file. When that script
file finishes without errors, the original script will
continue.
log <text>
Write text to the logfile.
If you want to make your script to exit minicom (for example when
you use minicom to dial up your ISP, and then start a PPP or SLIP
session from a script), try the command "! killall -9 minicom" as
the last script command. The -9 option should prevent minicom from
hanging up the line and resetting the modem before exiting.
Well, I don't think this is enough information to make you an
experienced 'programmer' in 'runscript', but together with the
examples it shouldn't be too hard to write some useful script
files. Things will be easier if you have experience with BASIC.
The minicom source code comes together with two example scripts,
scriptdemo and unixlogin. Especially the last one is a good base
to build on for your own scripts.
minicom(1)
Runscript should be built in to minicom.
Miquel van Smoorenburg, <miquels@drinkel.ow.org> Jukka Lahtinen,
<walker@netsonic.fi>
This page is part of the minicom (a serial communication program)
project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://salsa.debian.org/minicom-team/minicom⟩. If you have a bug
report for this manual page, send it to adam@lackorzynski.de.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://salsa.debian.org/minicom-team/minicom⟩ on 2025-08-11.
(At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
in the repository was 2025-07-16.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
User's Manual $Date: 2007-10-07 18:13:51 $ RUNSCRIPT(1)
Pages that refer to this page: minicom(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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