Please read perlipc, section Sockets: Client/Server Communication. If you want to learn something more, there are two useful books: Network Programming with Perl and Programming the Network with Perl.

Ciao, Valerio

IO::Socket be appropriate for this? I seem to remember it being used in a client in Learning Perl.

Bukowski - aka Dan (dcs@black.hole-in-the.net)
"Coffee for the mind, Pizza for the body, Sushi for the soul" -Userfriendly

Dingus

server.pl:

use strict;
use IO::Socket;

my $server = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto => "tcp",
                                   Listen => 5,
                                   LocalPort => "3000",
                                   Timeout => 2000)
             || die "failed to start server\n";
print "server wait for client to connect ...\n";
my $connection = $server->accept;
print "a client connected\n";
while (1) {
    my $req;
    $connection->recv($req, 7000);
    print "server received $req\n";
    my $res = $req + 1;
    print $connection $res;
    print "server responsed $res\n";
}

client.pl

use strict;
use IO::Socket;

my $client = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto => "tcp",
                                   PeerAddr => "172.135.2.54",
                                   PeerPort => "3000",
                                   Timeout => 2)
             || die "failed to connect to a server\n";
my $req = 1;
while (1) {
    print $client $req;
    print "client sent $req\n";
    my $res;
    $client->recv($res, 7000);
    print "client received $res\n";
    $req = $res;
}
[download]

pg, you've solved my problem, thanks a lot. I see how its done now, before I was using a loop like: while (sysread($handle, $byte, 1) == 1) { print; } to receive every byte, as the server sent no line feeds or other control characters to seperate its messages. It simply sends them as individual tcp packet's - i found this out using Ethereal (packet sniffer). Thanks to everyone to replied.

Here involves two different concepts:
1. TCP reassembles all packets, and that is transparent to the end programmer.
2. When your application reads from buffer, it shall take care of the boundary between packets.