Folks: I am trying to write a script to telnet a service on local service but I really don't know how to do it. Basically, there are two tasks: task 1 is to get connection with the service: "telnet localhost 1300" where 1300 is the port the service listens on. After get connection with the service I then need to do task2. task2 is to execute a command and forward the result to a file: "subnet 1.2.3.4 > output.txt" I did some research about it and it seems expect command does that kind of work. Howerver, please notice that I don't need user name/ password or a remote host in order to connect to the port. Can anybody give me some clue? Thanks a lot!!! gangchen

rsh is often used to execute something on a remote machine. You can't use it for non-standard ports, though. The expect syntax looks like this: spawn "/bin/sh" send "telnet localhost 1300\r" sleep 1 expect "some_prompt" send "subnet 1.2.3.4 > output.txt\r\r" close