Pexpect and PyCharm - Inappropriate ioctl for device

Question

I'm trying to run a basic Pexpect script:

import pexpect
ftp_process = pexpect.spawn('ftp')
ftp_process.interact()

When the code is run directly from a terminal, the code works as expected. If I run the code using PyCharm's run/debug I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/path/to/code/test.py", line 3, in <module>
    ftp_process.interact()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.4/site-packages/pexpect/__init__.py", line 1645, in interact
    mode = tty.tcgetattr(self.STDIN_FILENO)
termios.error: (25, 'Inappropriate ioctl for device')

It seems that how Pexpect interacts with PyCharm's run/debug window doesn't work by default. Is there some way to remedy this with a specific PyCharm setting? If not, is there some other way to work around this?

EDIT

The code above is simply a shortened example which results in the problem. The other abilities of pexpect (such as expect(), sendline(), etc) are still desired.

Answer 1

Note: This is only a workaround, but it does work.

If the script is called from a pseudo-tty by using a separate script the desired results can be achieved. For example, using pty.spawn("python my_script.py".split()) where my_script.py is the one using pexpect.

I found it reasonable to have a single script which attempts the pexpect calls initially within a try/except and upon catching the error, have the script recall itself in inside a pseudo-tty.

Credit goes to J.F. Sebastian in the comments of the original question.

Answer 2

Try something which can allocate Pseudo TTYs. That should trick ftp into thinking that it has a TTY (which is something that is given when you run Python REPL from the terminal). Example:

pexpect.pty.spawn('ftp')

You can also try ptyprocess although I can't vouch for it's correctness/being in a working state.