Eric

$login="vpnclient.exe connect \"VPN NAME\" user \"username\" pwd \"pas
+sword\" ";
system ("exit");
system ($login);
[download]

Expect is the way to go in my opinion (based on the little information that you provided. I would dig in and get it working with that. Unless someone has already written a PM that works with the VPN client that you are using.

Eric

Expect's interface is a little weird, but once you get it working it should be pretty easy. Something like the following should work:

use Expect;
system('exit');

my $exp = Expect->new;
$exp->spawn( 
   'vpnclient.exe connect "VPN NAME" user "username" pwd "password"' 
);

$exp->expect( 10, [ qr/Do you wish to continue/i => 
    sub { $exp->send('y'); $exp->exp_continue; } ] );
[download]

Check out the faq entry

8.25: How can I capture STDERR from an external command?
[download]

You can also use the Searchbox and search for "IPC".

A super-simplified barebones example is below. IPC::OPen3 may not work in your particular case, and there can be many reasons why. In a real situation, you need to process the STDOUT and STDERR outputs with alot of regex's, then determine what reply to send to STDIN.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use IPC::Open3;

#interface to "bc" calculator 
#my $pid = open3(\*WRITE, \*READ, \*ERROR,"bc"); 
my $pid = open3(\*WRITE, \*READ,0,"bc");
            #if \*ERROR is false, STDERR is sent to STDOUT  

while(1){
print "Enter expression for bc, i.e. 2 + 2\n";
chomp(my $query = <STDIN>);

#send query to bc 
print WRITE "$query\n";

#give bc time to output 
select(undef,undef,undef,.5);

#get the answer from bc 
chomp(my $answer = <READ>);
print "$query = $answer\n";

}

waitpid($pid, 1);
# It is important to waitpid on your child process,   
# otherwise zombies could be created.
[download]