Here’s an idiom to say that something happened just as you expected it to. In normal conversation you might say something like 跟我想像的一样（跟我想像的一樣 gēn wǒ xiǎngxiàng de yīyàng）which means “the same as I thought”, but this is seven characters, as opposed to the four of the following idiom.
I like this idiom because it’s one that can be broken down easily to see what it actually means, and in doing so I learnt some new words for ‘presume/expect’. First off, 不出 means to ‘not come out’, or here more like “not outside of”, 所 is “that/of” (it’s one of those characters with many meanings and uses), then last 料 is short for 料想（liàoxiǎng）, or 预料（yùliào）, both of which contain the meaning of expectation – in other words ‘not outside of expectations’, or ‘as expected’. For ‘expect’ I usually would have used 預期（预期 yù qí）so it was good to not only learn the meaning of the idiom but also a couple of new words in the process.
Here some examples of this idiom in use:
他很聪明，期末考不出所料考100分 （他很聰明，期末考不出所料考100分）
Tā hěn cōngmíng, qímò kǎo bùchūsuǒliào kǎo 100 fēn
He’s really clever, as expected he got 100% on the end of semester test.
我们昨天喝很多酒，今天早上不出所料大家都宿醉了（我們昨天喝很多酒，今天早上不出所料大家都宿醉了）
Wǒmen zuótiān hē hěnduō jiǔ, jīntiān zǎoshang bùchūsuǒliào dàjiā dōu sùzuì le
We drank a lot yesterday and this morning, as expected, we all have hangovers.
Thanks, Dave, I’ll try to remember that one, although I have never spent much time trying to remember many chengyu.
果然 (guǒrán) is a similar (even shorter!) phrase, also good to know. Two definitions given by the ABC dictionary are “Sure enough” (which, at the beginning of a sentence, is very native English usage, at least in the USA, particularly for a more emotion-laden sentence), and “as expected” (which strikes me as a perhaps more natural translation when 果然 appears later, in a more calmly spoken sentence).
Yeah, you’re right. When I first saw this idiom its usage was more along the lines of “According to plan”, in response to a building project being completed on time. So in this sense its use is a bit more formal (as a lot of Mandarin idioms are), and 果然 more suitable for everyday use.