my $io = io("$host:$port");
while ($_ = $io->getline) {
   next unless /some_regex/;
   # do stuff with line
}
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Not really. From the Net::Telnet:

Other reasons to use this module than strictly with a TEL­NET port are:

  · You're not familiar with sockets and you want a simple way to make client connections to TCP services.
  
  · You want to be able to specify your own time-out while connecting, reading, or writing.

  · You're communicating with an interactive program at the other end of some socket or pipe and you want to wait for certain patterns to appear.

When debugging, I use the command line telnet to connect to all types of servers (http, smtp, etc). There's no reason why you cannot use Net::Telnet the same way.

-derby

yea.. I figured.. either works however when I use a simple inet socket connection there's a lot of garbage in front of the text which leads me to believe there are format codes in the message. Leads me to think it's in vt100 mode or something. I guess I may have to use net::telnet after all

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use IO::Socket;
my ( $host, $port, $kidpid, $handle, $line );
#unless ( @ARGV == 2 ) { die "usage: $0 host port" } 
( $host, $port ) = @ARGV || ('localhost',4444);

# create a tcp connection to the specified host and port 
$handle = IO::Socket::INET->new(
    Proto    => "tcp",
    PeerAddr => $host,
    PeerPort => $port
  )
  or die "can't connect to port $port on $host: $!";
$handle->autoflush(1);    # so output gets there right away 
print STDERR "[Connected to $host:$port]\n";

# split the program into two processes, identical twins 
die "can't fork: $!" unless defined( $kidpid = fork() );

# the if{} block runs only in the parent process 
if ($kidpid) {

    # copy the socket to standard output 
    while ( defined( $line = <$handle> ) ) {
                      print STDOUT $line;
                      }
    kill( "TERM", $kidpid );    # send SIGTERM to child 
}

# the else{} block runs only in the child process 
else {

    # copy standard input to the socket 
    while ( defined( $line = <STDIN> ) ) {
        print $handle $line;
    }
}
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