Use netcat instead?
printf "NICK gitbot42\nUSER foo bar baz\nPRIVMSG #gitevents :pull now\nQUIT :foobar\n" | nc irc.server.foo 6667 printf "NICK gitbot42\nUSER foo bar baz\nPRIVMSG #gitevents :pull now\nQUIT :foobar\n" | nc irc.server.foo 6667