in reply to sockets and such in Perl

I would set up a central database and each process saves name by name in that database, each in their own table.

After saving a name, you do a select on the three tables joined for names which are in the three tables, results ordered alfabetically. The top one is your answer. Once you get an answer the programs report and stop.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law