Lecture Utilities

Various items to assist with lecture code repositories.

Executes a command and compares its output with the contents of a specified file.

For example:

lecture-utils -c "python tests/test1.py" -e "tests/test1.out"

Development

Install dependencies:

npm install

Build:

npm run build

For CLI:

./dist/cli.js

Test options

LectureItemTest supports two execution modes:

• ioMode: "pipe" (default): existing spawn-with-pipes behavior
• ioMode: "pty": runs command in a pseudo-terminal using node-pty

PTY mode is opt-in and can be configured per test:

{
  "cmd": "python cases/test4-pty.py",
  "ioMode": "pty",
  "stdin": "Ada Lovelace\n",
  "pty": {
    "cols": 80,
    "rows": 24,
    "env": { "TERM": "xterm-256color" },
    "inputDelayMs": 0,
    "stripAnsi": true,
    "normalizeNewlines": true,
    "timeoutMs": 2000
  }
}

Notes:

• PTY mode is opt-in; existing tests keep default pipe behavior.
• PTY output can vary across operating systems and shells.
• Interactive output/input interleaving is not guaranteed to be perfectly deterministic for all programs.