I'm no expert but: can't you just use a fork? I haven't used it for a while but IIRC it's actually not very hard to use and there are several nice examples in perlipc.

Something like: 

if (my $pid = fork()) {
    # network stuff
} else {
    # file stuff
}

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In reply to Re: Simultaneously reading from a file and serving data by grondilu
in thread Simultaneously reading from a file and serving data by wazoox

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