...site exhaustively, but couldn't find any tips on this. Here's my small ftp script within perl:
open(FTP_PIPE,"|ftp -n -i 11.11.111.11");
print FTP_PIPE <<EOF;
user abcd efghijk
cd /dir1/dir2
binary
! dir
mput test*.txt
dir
EOF
close(FTP_PIPE);
Thanks for all your help/tips. Much appreciated.