maybe you want chdir?

While lcd makes sense when you're in an interactive FTP session, you really don't need it when scripting (at least with perl) -- use the built-in chdir function:

use Net::FTP;

my $ftp = Net::FTP->new("some.host.name", Debug => 0)
  or die "Cannot connect to some.host.name: $@";

$ftp->login("anonymous",'-anonymous@')
  or die "Cannot login ", $ftp->message;

$ftp->cwd("/pub")
  or die "Cannot change working directory ", $ftp->message;

chdir "/tmp"
  or die "Cannot change local directory ", $!;

$ftp->get("that.file")
  or die "get failed ", $ftp->message;

$ftp->quit;
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