I'm starting to think the best solution (since I'm actually trying to fetch about 6 pages and then snatch stuff out of them with regex's) would be to perform the requests simultaneously rather than one after another.

It's simple with threads: 

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use threads;
use threads::shared;
use LWP::Simple;

my @urls = qw[
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/default.stm
http://q-lang.sourceforge.net/qdoc.html
file://localhost/c:/perl/html/index.html
http://search.cpan.org/~karasik/IO-Lambda-1.02/lib/IO/Lambda.pm
http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~meidanis/courses/mc336/2006s2/funcional/L-99
+_Ninety-Nine_Lisp_Problems.html
];

my @threads;
my %results :shared;

for my $url ( @urls ) {
    push @threads, async{
        printf "%d : fetching $url\n", threads->tid;
        $results{ $url } = get $url
            and printf "%d : got %d bytes\n", 
                threads->tid, length $results{ $url }
            or warn "failed to get $url";
    };
}

print "Waiting for threads";
$_->join for @threads;
print "threads completed";

### process the content here.
print "$_ : ", length $results{ $_ } for keys %results;

[download]

Output: 

>t-get.pl
1 : fetching http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/default.stm
2 : fetching http://q-lang.sourceforge.net/qdoc.html
3 : fetching file://localhost/c:/perl/html/index.html
Waiting for threads
4 : fetching http://search.cpan.org/~karasik/IO-Lambda-1.02/lib/IO/Lam
+bda.pm
5 : fetching http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~meidanis/courses/mc336/2006s2/f
+uncional/L-99_Ninety-Nine_Lisp_Problems.html
3 : got 378 bytes
5 : got 56912 bytes
4 : got 65372 bytes
1 : got 76380 bytes
2 : got 1244518 bytes
threads completed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/default.stm : 76380
http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~meidanis/courses/mc336/2006s2/funcional/L-99
+_Ninety-Nine_Lisp_Problems.html : 56912
http://search.cpan.org/~karasik/IO-Lambda-1.02/lib/IO/Lambda.pm : 6537
+2
file://localhost/c:/perl/html/index.html : 378
http://q-lang.sourceforge.net/qdoc.html : 1244518

[download]

Though if the list of urls to fetch grows much beyond a dozen or so, you'd want a slightly more sophistcated version that metered the number of concurrent gets and re-used the threads. That's also quite simple to write, but requires a little more thought.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

In reply to Re^3: My first socket program is SLOW? (threads) by BrowserUk
in thread My first socket program is SLOW? by ttlgreen

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