Hi Seq,

If the machine you are executing these commands from is not Win32, then I can recommend Net::OpenSSH. Although I haven't yet done much of this myself, it does allow communicating interactively with the processes on the remote end. I'm not sure why you said "expect is not an answer", but note that tying Expect together with Net::OpenSSH, as shown in the latter's documentation, would allow you to script interactions with the remote side.

Hope this helps,
-- Hauke D