Thank you very much for your response.

Based on the multiple solution(s) in that thread, I would still need to add an additional pipe in order to write to the driver, correct? As well as reading from the driver, pausing to take input from the console, sending that input into the driver, and then resume reading from the driver?

I'm beginning to think that either IPC::Run or IO::Socket::IP might be the only way to accomplish this sanely.