I had a similiar problem using TCP/IP sockets, and a fellow monk suggested that I solve the problem by setting flags on the handle. This worked great as long as I ran on UNIX. Unfortunately this didn't work for me since my script has to work on UNIX and Windows, but it may work for you.

use Fcntl;
my $flags;
fcntl(SERVER_HANDLE, F_GETFL, $flags) || die $!; # Get the current fla
+gs on the filehandle
$flags |= O_NONBLOCK; # Add non-blocking to the flags
fcntl(SERVER_HANDLE, F_SETFL, $flags) || die $!; # Set the flags on th
+e filehandle
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