I tried that, and it prints the incoming line. Also the select loops starts. I've change the following:

print "bob\n";
my $sel = IO::Select->new();
$sel->add($sock);
while (1){
print "!";
if ($b = $sel->can_read(0.5)){
        $line = <$socket>;
        print $line;
} else {  
        print ".";
}

} #end of while 1
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I see 'bob' printed, so the program is running there. After that I see infinite '!'s, so the loop starts. But nothing more. No dots, no lines.