If you are looking to fool the process into different columns, maybe you need to use IO::Pty. I havn't been able to figure it out myself, but there is something in "clone_winsize_from(\*FH)".

I have this example in my collection, and I can't remember where I got it...probably google.groups or here. Anyway, it may have a few hints for you.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Description: Fool a process into 
# thinking that STDOUT is a terminal, when in fact 
# it may be a file or a pipe. This can be useful 
# with programs like ps and w on linux... which 
# will trunc their output to the width of the 
# terminal, and, if they cannot detect the terminal 
# width, use a default 80 columns. Wouldn't it be 
# nice to say "ps -aux | grep etcshadow", and get 
# output that looks like when you just say "ps 
# -aux"? Well, that's the idea. 

#try ./pseudotty "xterm -e top" 
#or  ./pseudotty top 

use warnings;
use strict;
use IO::Pty;

die "usage: ptyexec command [args]\n" unless @ARGV;

my $pty = IO::Pty->new;
my $slave = $pty->slave;
open TTY,"/dev/tty" or die "not connected to a terminal\n";
$pty->clone_winsize_from(\*TTY);
close TTY;

my $pid = fork(); die "bad fork: $!\n" unless defined $pid;
if (!$pid) {
#  $slave->close(); 
  open STDOUT,">&=".$pty->fileno() or die $!;
  exec @ARGV;
}else{
  $pty->close();
     while (defined (my $line = <$slave>)) {
       print $line;
     }
}

#cleanup pty for next run 
$pty->close();
[download]

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