I don't have 5.8.2 installed, so cannot repeat your problem, but I want to point out this line, so it does not confuse thread newbies:

#threads->create(\&start_thread, "www.yahoo.com:80")->join; #works, bu
+t who cares :)
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For anyone wish to handle different sites multi-threaded, this code does not work for you, as it is not really multi-threaded in the way you want. You have to call detach() or simply don't call anything. By calling join(), the loop will halt until the child thread completes and returns.

I am not saying the author of the original post does not understand this, as he might just want to use join() to contrast the detach(), but a better contrast is:

threads->create(\&start_thread, "www.yahoo.com:80");
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