"thanks for the lecture.

You're welcome.

"Handling an unformatted data stream coming in on a socket surely has been done before"

I'm sure it has, which is why I pointed you towards sections of this site containing networking code and tutorials, as well as suggested you look at some frameworks on cpan. You really should do the bare minimum research before posting.

"I wasn't asking for code to be written, rather a code snippet of something already done."

See my previous response.