Did you type it in and perhaps mistyped something?

For me, the example web_fetch_p.pl + HTTPFetch.pm worked straight out of the box - almost. I downloaded the example zip file from the book and unzipped it.

Working on Win2k, I got this error on my first attempt to run it

"EINPROGRESS" is not exported by the Errno module at H:\devperl\socket
+s\perl_networking\ch13\HTTPFetch.pm line 12
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I found a workaround

use POSIX qw(:errno_h);
#use Errno 'EINPROGRESS';
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After this, I successfully retrieved a couple of perlmonks nodes: ours and yours

Rudif

Note: I also added the line to modify $localpath

  $localpath .= "index.html" if $localpath =~ m!/$!;
  $localpath =~ s/[\?\=\&]/-/g; # Rudif
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so that the URL of a perlmonks node translates into a valid filename (HTTPFetch stores the retrieved URL content into a local file of similar name).