I'm not an expert in Perl networking but I would say that you can use <$socket> for simple text/line based protocols (like basic HTTP client/server), and use read($socket, $data, $bufsize) for "binary" protocols and to get more control on the flow of information with non blocking I/O for example ...
BTW, I'm also waiting for comments from experienced monks on this subject :)

In reply to Re: IO::Socket::INET what to use to read/write from socket? by choocroot
in thread IO::Socket::INET what to use to read/write from socket? by kodo

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