One solution is to make your script multi-threaded, and use shared variables. I created this example for you, but you have to spend time to make this fit into your application, and my example is only a demo of the idea. Multi-thread is definitely no free lunch, and it requires time and experience.

(As you may realize that there is chance for my demo code to lose some input, as you might get another input, before the parent process finish with the prev one. In my code, I just throw the prev one away. You may want to use a buffer, and only throw input away when the buffer is full.)

use threads;
use threads::shared;

$| ++;

my $line = "";
share($line);

sub read_stdin {
    while (<STDIN>) {
        lock($line);
        $line = $_;
        print "child read in: $_\n";
    }
}

threads->create(\&read_stdin);
while (1) {
    if ($line ne "") {
        lock($line);
        print "parent process $line\n";
        $line = "";
    } else {
        print "do something else\n";
        sleep(1);#this nothing but to slow down the prints
    }
}
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