To investigate at some point in the near-ish future:

 '''empty''' is a utility that provides an interface to execute and/or interact
 with processes under pseudo-terminal sessions (PTYs). This tool is
 definitely useful in programming of shell scripts designed to communicate
 with interactive programs like telnet, ssh, ftp, etc. In some cases, empty
 can be the simplest replacement for TCL/expect or other similar
 programming tools.