use strict;
use Expect;
my $session = new Expect;
unless ($session->spawn("telnet $mach_connect")) {
	print "FATAL: could not connect to $tgt_mach\n";
	 exit 1;
	}

... login code here to bring the user to the prompt on the remote host

open(FILEHANDLE,"+< $filename");
... work on the file	
close(SNMPFILE);