Given that IO::Socket is based on IO::Handle, I would suggest looking there for the read, print, sysread, syswrite functions. You should be able to read and write to an IO::Socket through these functions.

What you are asking for is what is referred to as "chat server-client". You can find numerous examples of this code, but here is a client-server set which is about as simple as it gets. To get more functionality, you can setup a server which forks or creates a new thread for each client. This is needed when one client is doing something intensive like moving files. This one is suitable for short chat messages. You might also want to look at Net::EasyTCP, it sets up passwords for ports, and will encrpyt too. See ztk-enchat encrypted server client

####the server#############
#!/usr/bin/perl
use IO::Socket;
use IO::Select;

my @sockets;
my $machine_addr = '192.168.0.1';
$main_sock = new IO::Socket::INET(LocalAddr=>$machine_addr,
      LocalPort=>1200,
      Proto=>'tcp',
      Listen=>3,
            Reuse=>1,
            );

die "Could not connect: $!" unless $main_sock;
print "Starting Server\n";

$readable_handles = new IO::Select();
$readable_handles->add($main_sock);

while (1)
{
  ($new_readable) = IO::Select->select($readable_handles, undef, undef
+, 0);

  foreach $sock (@$new_readable)
  {
    if ($sock == $main_sock)
    {
      $new_sock = $sock->accept();
      $readable_handles->add($new_sock);
    }
    else
    {
      $buf = <$sock>;
      if ($buf)
      {
        print "$buf\n";
        my @sockets = $readable_handles->can_write();
        #print $sock "You sent $buf\n"; 
        foreach my $sck(@sockets){print $sck "$buf\n";}

      }
      else
      {
        $readable_handles->remove($sock);
        close($sock);
      }
    }
  }

}

print "Terminating Server\n";
close $main_sock;
getc();

##################################################
#################################################
##### client ####################################

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use IO::Socket;

my ( $host, $port, $kidpid, $handle, $line );

( $host, $port ) = ('192.168.0.1',1200);

my $name = shift || '';
if($name eq ''){print "What's your name?\n"}
chomp ($name = <>);


# create a tcp connection to the specified host and port 
$handle = IO::Socket::INET->new(
    Proto    => "tcp",
    PeerAddr => $host,
    PeerPort => $port
  )
  or die "can't connect to port $port on $host: $!";
$handle->autoflush(1);    # so output gets there right away 
print STDERR "[Connected to $host:$port]\n";

# split the program into two processes, identical twins 
die "can't fork: $!" unless defined( $kidpid = fork() );

# the if{} block runs only in the parent process 
if ($kidpid) {

    # copy the socket to standard output 
    while ( defined( $line = <$handle> ) ) {
                      print STDOUT $line;
                      }
    kill( "TERM", $kidpid );    # send SIGTERM to child 
}

# the else{} block runs only in the child process 
else {

    # copy standard input to the socket 
    while ( defined( $line = <STDIN> ) ) {
        print $handle "$name->$line";
    }
}
__END__
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