#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use IO::Socket::INET qw(CRLF);
use IO::Select;


my $socket = IO::Socket::INET->new(
   Listen => 5,
   LocalPort => 7777,
   Reuse => 1,
) or die $!;

my $reader = IO::Select->new($socket);
my @clients;  


while (1) {
   for my $ready ($reader->can_read()) {
      if ($ready == $socket) {
         my $client = $socket->accept();
         $reader->add($client);
         push @clients,$client;
      } else {
         my $buffer;
         sysread($ready,$buffer,1024);
         for my $client (@clients) {
            if ($client != $ready) { # Dont echo to client whose chatt
+ing
               syswrite($client,$buffer);
            }
         }
      }
   }
}
[download]

So I came up with this, it is pretty much all based on the same reference that karl mentioned to Network Programming by Stein. If you already have a group chat then it should be easy to adapt. instead of pushing your clients to an array as done here it would go into maybe a two dimensional array where each element is a client that talks to the other element and no one else. Or a hash with the key as the login name. You did not say who you want to talk to who. Maybe they enter a password and then that is the key to the hash that contains some structure that leads to the socket you want to write to. If that makes sense.