Just a litte fun:

Ok, it needs a lot more, p.e. you could code the reading part in a thread to loose the blocking.

Irc.pm

package Irc;

use strict;
use warnings;
use Carp;

use IO::Socket;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $server = shift;
    my $self = {
        SERVER => $server,
        MYSOCKET => undef,
    };
    my $closure = sub {
        my $field = shift;
        if (@_) { $self->{$field} = shift; }
        return $self->{$field};
    };
    bless ($closure, $class);
    return $closure;
}

# a public getter for the SERVER variable
sub server { &{ $_[0] }("SERVER") }

# a private getter/setter for the SOCKET variable
sub socket { 
    caller(0) eq __PACKAGE__ || confess "socket is a private method";
    &{ $_[0] }( "MYSOCKET", @_[1..$#_] );
}

# log on
sub connect {
    my $self = shift;
    my $socket = IO::Socket::INET->new( $self->server() );
    $self->socket($socket);
}

# logoff
sub disconnect {
    my $self = shift;
    my $sock = $self->socket;
    print $sock "exit\r";
    close $sock;
}

# send (and automatically append \r)
sub send {
    my $self = shift;
    my $text = shift;
    my $sock = $self->socket;
    print $text . "\n";
    print $sock $text . "\r";
}

# receive something from the server
sub read {
    my $self = shift;
    my $sock = $self->socket;
    PINGPONG: while (<$sock>) {
        print "$_";
        # break after receiving PING
        if (/^PING :(.+)\r$/) {
            $self->send("PONG :$1");
            last PINGPONG;
        }
        # break after receiving MOTD
        if (/ 376/) {
            last PINGPONG;
        }
    }
}

1;
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irc.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Irc;

my $session = Irc->new("localhost:6667");
$session->connect();
$session->send("nick whatever");
$session->read();
$session->send("user whatever ignored v1.0 :perl hack");
$session->read();
$session->send("join #room1");
# now keep on reading until receiving the special logoff code ;)
$session->read();
$session->disconnect();
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