$/ must be a string, not a regular expression. Awk has to be better for something. :-)
Actually, you could do this if you don't mind reading the whole file into memory:
undef $/; @records = split /your_pattern/, <FH>;The Net::Telnet module (available from CPAN) has the capability to wait for a pattern in the input stream, or timeout if it doesn't appear within a certain time.
## Create a file with three lines. open FH, ">file"; print FH "The first line\nThe second line\nThe third line\n"; close FH;
## Get a read/write filehandle to it. $fh = new IO::File "+<file";
## Attach it to a "stream" object. use Net::Telnet; $file = new Net::Telnet (-fhopen => $fh);
## Search for the second line and print out the third. $file->waitfor('/second line\n/'); print $file->getline;