Merlyn, as always your code looks sweet. Thank you.

I have used IO::Socket before, and would have preferred use it again. However, this machine is an antiquated (legacy) SCO server that is thoroughly broken. We fear change on this box, and instead are migrating all services away, to OpenBSD computers. This philosophy led me to use the internal socket instead.

Regardless of my reasons, I agree that your code is preferable!

Thank you also for the benchmarking. I had no idea that the performance difference would be so great. I had hoped to eke out just a few more requests. Sounds like it may handle dozens. Since the nimdA virus seems to hit servers with 16 requests at a time, we should be in good shape until we can take that box offline.