Did you actually examine the POST command you have on your UNIX system? ;)

$ head /usr/local/bin/POST
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

eval 'exec /usr/local/bin/perl -w -S $0 ${1+"$@"}'
    if 0; # not running under some shell

# $Id: lwp-request,v 2.6 2003/10/26 14:39:18 gisle Exp $
#
# Simple user agent using LWP library.

=head1 NAME
[download]

So yeah, it's just a simple Perl script that uses the LWP module. See perldoc /usr/local/bin/POST for the POD on that (please note: on my system, POST is located in /usr/local/bin. On your system it could be different, but a simple which POST will show you the location).

Presuming that it's in your PATH just a simple perldoc POST should find it.</pedant>

And perldoc lwpcook would also be of interest.

Perhaps the following code snippet will help you get going in the right direction. It needs a lot of error-checking (it's not intended to be a robust solution, just a starting point).

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Request;

$/  = undef; #slurp;
my $content = <STDIN>;

my $uri = shift; # arg

my $method = 'POST';

my $request = HTTP::Request->new($method, $uri, undef, $content);

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(timeout => 10);

my $response = $ua->request($request);

if ($response->is_success)
{
    print $response->content;
}
else
{
    print $response->error_as_HTML;
}
[download]

perl -MLWP::UserAgent -wle 'print LWP::UserAgent -> new -> 
post ("https://xxx.xxx.xx.xxx/portal/webservices.cgi", 
[`cat topup.txt`]) -> content'
[download]

Abigail