Code that does a "use Socket" is working at the wrong level.

use IO::Socket;
my $sock = IO::Socket::INET->new("127.0.0.1:7000") or die "Cannot conn
+ect: $!";
print "connected.  enter command: ";
my $cmd = <STDIN>;
print $sock $cmd;
while (<$sock>) {
  print;
}
[download]

Far simpler. Far easier to read. Far fewer magic constants.