That's a terrific article, blakem. Thank you for the reference.

In this case, though, the mendicant brother has used the IO::Socket module, and according to the article, this module defeats the problem of buffering.

  Use the IO::Socket module; recent versions (since  
  version 1.18) make sockets hot by default.
[download]

Good catch..... I had the nagging suspicion that IO::Socket might sidestep this problem, but didn't bother to investigate further. (after all, its easier to slap up a link than to do any real digging ;-)   ) Thanks for pointing out the definitive answer.

-Blake