Hi,
I hope I do not look too nasty but... Try to have a look at the Net::IRC module. It does that for you and more beside :))

As it said inn the module man page:

use Net::IRC;

$irc = new Net::IRC;
$conn = $irc->newconn(Nick    => 'some_nick',
                      Server  => 'some.irc.server.com',
                      Port    =>  6667,
                      Ircname => 'Some witty comment.');
$irc->start;
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By the way, doing it through Socket, implies reading very carefully the IRC rfc.

I was going to try to use the least amount of third party modules. I've allready read the IRC rfc. But i guess i can go ahead and use NET:IRC until i get the whole sockets problem fixed :)

Thanks for the help
^jasper <jasper@wintermarket.org>

$sock = IO::Socket::INET->new ( PeerAddr => $server,
                                PeerPort => $sport,
                                Proto => "tcp" );
if($sock==undef) { print "Could not connect to Host!\n"; exit; }

while (1) {
    #the problem is that it needs to stay connected to the server
    #so it can continuously send/receive data or wait for data to 
    #get data from the server
    
        next unless $sock->recv($buff,5000); #get data? if possible
    print <$buff>;
    
    #i had a bunch of code here that parses/uses the data from the ser
+ver. 
}
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