i beleive i have found the bug......

in the following section of code:-

#create new client socket object
sub create_new_client_sock {
    
    #create socket
    
    my $sock = IO::Socket::INET->new(
                    PeerAddr => $conf_file->{server},
                    PeerPort => $conf_file->{port},
                    Blocking => 0,
                    );
    
    #check if socket exists
    if (!($sock)) {
        die "could not establish socket to " . $conf_file->{server} . 
+":" . $conf_file->{port} . "\n";
    }
    

    #return socker object reference
    return $sock;
    
}
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it would appear that if i set the socket to non-blocking, the script fails with the symptoms described. but if i set it to blocking, then it works perfectly...

i am mystified as to why, and to be frank, right now i am past caring, it has taken me all day to figure this out, including three different writes (using a while loop, event module and select).

thankyou for your patience and your help, but i think i am going to call it a day for now and try and figure out what i did wrong in the morning.