Hmmm. Maybe this is a bug in my version of PERL (v5.6.1 on Linux). I made the following test program called "test.pl": 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use Expect;

my $object = Expect->spawn( "bash" ) or
  die "Could not spawn bash shell.\n";
$object->log_stdout(0);
$object->max_accum( 128 * 512 );
my $header = "Test Log Header";
$object->send( "cat test_log.txt\n" );
my ($matched_pattern_position, $error,
  $successfully_matching_string, $before_match, 
  $after_match) =$object->expect( 5 , -re => $header );
if( $error ne undef ) {
  die "Could not find header.\n";
}
my @rows = split /^/ , $after_match;
printf "Found %d lines after match in file.\n", scalar( @rows );

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And created the file "test_log.txt" that looks something like this: 
Test Log Header
040702003113 21% 1175 1859 8239 8744 2221 0 0 4 100% 7% T 6%
040702003113 21% 1175 1859 8239 8744 2221 0 0 4 100% 7% T 6%
040702003113 21% 1175 1859 8239 8744 2221 0 0 4 100% 7% T 6%
040702003113 21% 1175 1859 8239 8744 2221 0 0 4 100% 7% T 6%
040702003113 21% 1175 1859 8239 8744 2221 0 0 4 100% 7% T 6%
...for 160 lines...

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Then see the following: 
Output of "wc test_log.txt":
161    2243    9776 test_log.txt

Ouput of "test.pl":
Found 34 lines after match in file.

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So there's no ssh or any other complication, just the basic expect buffer of a cat result. Can someone else try this and confirm that it works as expected on their system?

Thanks,

Bret

In reply to Re^2: Expecting more from expect by bret.foreman
in thread Expecting more from expect by bret.foreman

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