See the perl socket examples at UNO perl examples. They explain it from the very basic level, and you should move up to using higher level perl moules like IO::Socket and IO::Select. However, it is useful to know how to do it the hard way :-)

Here is one tip that gets most beginners, your client should fork or thread itself off, so it can handle bi-directional socket flow seamlessly, without having to use the send and recv modes of IO::Socket. Here is the basic client to get you started, the $name thing is there for no essential reason except to identify clients, you don't need it. :-)

A basic client:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use IO::Socket;

my ( $host, $port, $kidpid, $handle, $line );

( $host, $port ) = ('localhost',1200);

my $name = shift || '';
if($name eq ''){print "What's your name?\n"}
chomp ($name = <>);


# create a tcp connection to the specified host and port
$handle = IO::Socket::INET->new(
    Proto    => "tcp",
    PeerAddr => $host,
    PeerPort => $port
  )
  or die "can't connect to port $port on $host: $!";
$handle->autoflush(1);    # so output gets there right away
print STDERR "[Connected to $host:$port]\n";

# split the program into two processes, identical twins
die "can't fork: $!" unless defined( $kidpid = fork() );

# the if{} block runs only in the parent process
if ($kidpid) {

    # copy the socket to standard output
    while ( defined( $line = <$handle> ) ) {
                      print STDOUT $line;
                      }
    kill( "TERM", $kidpid );    # send SIGTERM to child
}

# the else{} block runs only in the child process
else {

    # copy standard input to the socket
    while ( defined( $line = <STDIN> ) ) {
        print $handle "$name->$line";
    }
}
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