Well I can yank that loop right out of there and I still get the same behavior. I found something interesting, however. I simplified the code to this:

my (@from_server,$from_user);
while (my $from_user = <>) { # a simple "GET" command
    print $socket $from_user;
    my @from_server = <$socket>;
    print @from_server;

}
close $socket;
[download]

Now, this code works when connected to an HTTP port. This is what had me confused. I'm discovering the the bad behavior only occurs when connected to an FTP port where it will hang. Now is this because the connection is terminated by the server in an HTTP connection? I'm guessing this is what must be happening but I don't know for sure. When connected to an FTP, it waits and waits for more data to fill the array because the connection is still open, I'm also assuming.

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