You might want to check out Who needs files? Net::FTP::Scalar (code) where this topic was discussed previously.

Since then, when I need to simply grab the contents of a file on an FTP server, I'll often use this:

use LWP::Simple qw(get);

my $data = get("ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-curren
+t/ChangeLog.txt");
[download]

Staunch