Thanks for all the great suggestions. Unfortunately, changing the environment is quite impossible. I'm stuck having to 'sudo bash'. If I can't automate through that (icky) interface, I'm stuck largely copy/pasting chunks of commands.

Why are you stuck to 'sudo bash'? Why can't you do `sudo perl_script`?

Well, even if you can't control sudo configuration and only "bash" is available for execution, then try something like

my $pid = open(OUT, "|-");
die "Can't fork\n" unless defined $pid;
if(!$pid)
{
    exec "sudo bash";
    die "oops no exec\n";
}

select OUT;
$| = 1;
print "echo hi there\nexit\n";
close(OUT);
[download]