Network Programming with Perl

A Multiplexed Client

Before addressing the details of how select() works, let's rewrite our "gab" client to use multiplexing. gab5.pl, like its previous incarnations, accepts lines from standard input, transmits them to a remote server, and then relays the response from the server to standard output. Figure 12.1 shows the code.

Figure 12.1. A multiplexed client

Lines 1–9: Load modules and process command-line arguments We turn on strict type checking and load the IO::Select and IO::Socket modules. We read the host and port to connect to from the command line, or if a host is not specified, we assume the echo service on the local host.