You should be able to do it using eval, what are your scoping problems?

Well, anyway, you can also use Net::SFTP::Foreign. It will not die on that kind of errors:

my $sftp = Net::SFTP::Foreign->new($::config{'ahost'},
    user => $::config{'auser'},
    password => $::config{'apass'},
    more => [
        'ConnectTimeout 30',
        'ServerAliveInterval 20',
        'ServerAliveCountMax 3'
    ]
);
if ($sftp->error) {
    $self->{error} = "Unable to open SFTP connection: " . $sftp->error
+;
    return;
}
$self->{sftp} = $sftp;
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