Network Programming with Perl

Using UNIX-Domain Sockets for Datagrams

UNIX-domain sockets can be used to send and receive datagrams. When creating the socket (or accepting IO::Socket::UNIX's default), instead of specifying a type of SOCK_STREAM, create the socket with SOCK_DGRAM. You will now be able to use send() and recv() to transmit messages over the socket without establishing a long-term connection.

Because UNIX-domain sockets are local to the host, there are some important differences between using UNIX-domain sockets to send datagrams locally and using the UDP protocol to send datagrams across the network. On the plus side, UNIX-domain datagrams are reliable and sequenced. Unlike with the UDP protocol, you can count on the UNIX-domain datagrams reaching their destinations ...