in reply to Bidirectional Client/Server - to fork or not to fork?

One thing I haven't yet seen mentioned elsewhere in this thread is use of IO::Socket::IP, which can be used as a drop-in replacement for the more outdated IO::Socket::INET class. The newer version supports IPv6, so the only real reason to use the IPv4-only outdated version is when you're using a version of Perl before 5.20 (or need to maintain compatibility) and are unable to use the CPAN version of IO::Socket::IP.

Even if you don't have a current need to support IPv6, you make future expansion harder, and in today's Internet where IPv6 is (finally!) becoming more common, it's getting far harder to ignore. There's often little reason to avoid use of IO::Socket::IP since it supports both IPv4 and IPv6, and is also usable with the family-neutral functions provided by the Socket library (such as Socket::getaddrinfo.)

Consider if there's a good reason you want to write non-portable code that assumes IPv4 will be (exclusively) used everywhere your code will be.

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Re^2: Bidirectional Client/Server - to fork or not to fork?
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Dec 07, 2015 at 05:05 UTC
    e of IO::Socket::IP, which can be used as a drop-in replacement for the more outdated IO::Socket::INET class.

    Is there a good reason why this is a new module (name) rather than integrated transparently into the IO::Socket::* hierachy?

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      My feeling is you'd have to dig into the historical significance of IO::Socket::INET, and I don't have much of a personal interest. From what I've read of the IO::Socket::IP class, this is largely not the default for IO::Socket PF_INET due to reasons of legacy compatibility (eg: scripts that literally choke if their network socket is not of the exact class IO::Socket::INET.)

      This said, see the docs for IO::Socket::IP since you can import it using use IO::Socket::IP -register which makes it take over constructor methods when creating either PF_INET or PF_INET6 sockets. This is as close to transparent integration as can be done without possibly breaking older scripts.

      Perhaps someone else knows more about this history/legacy than I do.

      Update: also note that as of Perl 5.20, IO::Socket::IP is part of Perl's core modules, per the release notes. Presumably this is so that IPv6 sockets work "out of the box" without requiring users of modern Internet sockets to go to CPAN for the replacement.

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Re^2: Bidirectional Client/Server - to fork or not to fork?
by ljamison (Sexton) on Dec 07, 2015 at 00:55 UTC

    Interesting! I had not come across mention of that module anywhere. Could you provide an example of say a basic sample server?

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