Thanks for the comments. I'm going to write a general answer rather than a specific one for each comment.

I've got a tracking and reporting system that I want to integrate with a terminal-based parts system. Normally, we only do paperwork tracking of the parts, and that wastes a lot of our time.

What I was thinking was, "Why not run telnet through Expect.pm and have it do screen captures (for a printout of the paperwork--without the paper backup I can't convince people to switch over) and also have it pick up the interesting parts of the order--part number, serial number, airbill number, and so on." I expect I could do this without using Expect.pm, but what I read about Expect.pm leads me to expect that this is a good solution.

On the other hand, using Net::Telnet for this hadn't occurred to me, and it should have. I'm going to treat that as option #2. This isn't a hurry-up job, just something I want to add soon when I have time.

I have installed IO::Tty and IO::Stty, and the stub I wrote indicates that my trouble is due to not getting IO::Pty working. I'm going to go up to 5.005_03 as soon as possible (I started with it last night, but make didn't like my makefile), and I have a hunch that is going to fix it, as tilly suggests. If not, well, a note to the maintainer is in order, and looking at doing my task without Expect is also on the list.

Again, thanks for the help--I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Update: Since I'm not at that job anymore, I've quit working on this particular task for the moment. I wish I had a good (i.e., useful to others) answer to the question, but I don't. Still, I promised an update...