use Net::OpenSSH;

my $ssh = Net::OpenSSH->new($remotehost, user => $remoteuser, password
+ => $remotepassword);
$ssh->die_on_error("unable to connect to remote host");

my ($out, $err) = $ssh->capture2(ls => '-l', $remotefile);
[download]

Another option is to use SFTP:

use Net::SFTP::Foreign;
use Data::Dumper;

my $sftp = Net::SFTP::Foreign->new($remotehost,
                                   user => $remoteuser, password => $r
+emotepassword,
                                   autodie => 1);

my $attr = $sftp->stat($remotefile);
print Dumper $attr;
[download]