The previous respondant was actually correct; you need to create an expect object and then use that object to do things. I don't claim great expertise in it either, but I have been asked to make things work in Perl Expect. What I'll offer is a bit of a code snippet where the script is logging into a router via ssh and then looking at the prompt to help determine the type of the router.

    my $exp = new Expect;
    $exp->raw_pty(1);
    $exp->log_stdout(0);
    # $exp->log_stdout(1); # uncomment for debugging
    $exp->log_file($logfile);
    my $host = "$r\.domain\.com";
    $exp->spawn("ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no $user{$r}\@$host ") |
+|
       die("Cannot spawn an ssh session within expect.\n");
    $exp->expect($delay,
        [
        'assword:',
        sub {    my $exp = shift;
            $exp->send("$pass{$r}\r");
            exp_continue;
        }
        ],
        [
        eof =>
        sub {     $exitcode = 1; }
        ],
        [
        timeout =>
        sub {     $exitcode = 2; }
        ],
        [
        '>',
        sub {     my $exp = shift;
            $cisco = $false;
            $prompt = '>';
        }
        ],
        [
        '#',
        sub {     my $exp = shift;
        }
        ],);
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