You want to use the log_file
command, not set a log_file variable
log_file ~/mylogfile.log
Other notes:
Tcl has a very nice builtin command to handle time, don't need to call out to date:
set myStamp [clock format [clock seconds] -format {[%d/%m/%Y %T]}]
the @ character is not special in Tcl/expect and does not need to be escaped:
spawn ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" "me@$1"
As noted, log_file
logs a transcript of the session. Just to log specific messages, you can use plain Tcl:
/usr/bin/expect <<EOF
proc log_msg {msg {to_stdout no}} {
set log_line "[timestamp -format {[%Y-%m-%d %T]}] \$msg"
set fh [open ~/mylogfile.log a]
puts \$fh \$log_line
close \$fh
if {\$to_stdout} {puts \$log_line}
}
# ...
expect {
"No route to host" {
log_msg "No route to host" yes
exit 1
}
timeout { log_msg "Timed out to $1"]; exit 1 }
}
# ...
EOF
This opens and closes the log for each message, which adds a bit of overhead. If milliseconds are important, open the log in the global scope, and use the global variable holding the file hendle in the log_msg proc.