Network Programming with Perl

A "Wrap" Server

As a sample application we'll use the standard Text::Wrap module to create a simple text-formatting server. The server accepts a chunk of text input, reformats it into narrow 30-column paragraphs, and returns the reformatted text to the client. The server, named wrap_serv.pl uses the standard forking architecture and the IO::Socket::UNIX library. The client, wrap_cli.pl, uses a simple design that sends the entire input file to the server, shuts down the socket for writing, and then reads back the reformatted data. The following is an example of the output from the client after feeding it an excerpt from the beginning of this chapter:

% wrap_cli.pl ../ch22.txt
Connected to /tmp/wrapserv...

In previous chapters we have focused ...