Now I am back to where I started, 1 response ever 1 or 2 seconds, too slow. Is there a simple solution to thread this properly?

Yes. Try this:

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use threads;
use threads::shared;
use Thread::Queue;
use LWP::Simple;

my $sem :shared;

sub lookup {
    my( $fh, $name ) = @_;
    my $lookup = get(
        "http://rscript.org/lookup.php?type=track&time=62899200&user=$
+name&skill=all"
    );

    print "Looking up $name...\n";

    if( $lookup =~ m/gain:Overall:\d+:(\d+)/isg ) {
        lock $sem;
        print { $fh } "$name $1\n";
    }
    elsif( $lookup =~ m/(ERROR)/isg ) {
        lock $sem;
        print { $fh } "$name doesn't exist \n"
    }
    else{
        lock $sem;
        print { $fh } "$name 0\n";
    }
}

our $THREADS //= 4;

my $names = 'zezima fred bill john jack';
my $Q = new Thread::Queue;

open( LOOKUP, '>>rstlookup.txt' ) or die $!;

my @threads = map async( sub {
    while( my $name = $Q->dequeue ) {
        lookup( \*LOOKUP, $name );
    }
} ), 1 .. $THREADS;


while( $names =~ m/([a-z0-9_]+)/isg ) {
    $Q->enqueue( $1 );
    sleep 1 while $Q->pending > $THREADS * 2;
}

$Q->enqueue( (undef) x $THREADS );

$_->join for @threads;

close( LOOKUP );

__END__
[15:38:57.93] C:\test>junk39
Looking up john...

Looking up bill...

Looking up fred...

Looking up zezima...

Looking up jack...


[15:39:03.07] C:\test>type rstlookup.txt
bill 0

fred 135601422

zezima 417155645

john 0

jack 8133157
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