ioctl in perl (was: using System V 'cu')

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <3605 at jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall at jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes:
>: How about adding ioctl() to perl so we can use it instead?

>Er, um, that's kinda hard.  But I been thinkin' about it.

I was just thinking in terms of being able to dial out a tty port and
chat and/or exec some file transfer protocol (with uucp compatible lock
files, etc.)  For that purpose it might be easier to build in "stty" instead
of the full ioctl() functionality with the associated problem of undefined
structs.

However, perhaps I should ask your opinion on a "higher-level" approach.
What would you do if you did not have "rsh" and needed similar functionality
over dial-up or direct serial lines with some unix, some non-unix machines.
I'm using various versions of kermit for some of this, especially exchanging
files with a VM/CMS host where nothing else works, but I'm not entirely
satisfied with it.  Should I be looking at SLIP and something to emulate
rsh under SysV, or a wrapper around zmodem protocol (this may need to
run over a satellite connection), or fixing kermit to do what I want, or...?

Les Mikesell