The only version of ftp I find after a quick search of the environments on my two main desktops to have an -s option is the one supplied by Microsoft for command-line use within Windows. It's merely used to supply the name of a text file with FTP commands in it, which could be handled any number of other ways when you're writing the application.

My suggestion would be to parse the text files that exist and perform the actions using Net::FTP. Barring that, I'd do as Joost suggests and wrap the existing FTP client.

Be careful with other people's descriptions of the command-line options. For example, apl gives you the proper meaning of the -v option for the BSD and Linux version of ftp, but Microsoft uses the same option to mean the exact opposite.