Well, if the socket blocks, then make it nonblocking! :-)
Copied and pasted from Perl Cookbook:

sub nonblock {
    my $socket = shift;
    my $flags;
 
    $flags = fcntl($socket, F_GETFL, 0)
            or die "Can't get flags for socket: $!\n";
    fcntl($socket, F_SETFL, $flags | O_NONBLOCK)
            or die "Can't make socket nonblocking: $!\n";
}
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