Perl Cookbook

Communicating over TCP

Problem

You want to read or write data over a TCP connection.

Solution

This recipe assumes you’re using the Internet to communicate. For TCP-like communication within a single machine, see Section 17.6.

Use print or < > :

print SERVER "What is your name?\n";
chomp ($response = <SERVER>);

Or, use send and recv :

defined (send(SERVER, $data_to_send, $flags))
    or die "Can't send : $!\n";

recv(SERVER, $data_read, $maxlen, $flags)
    or die "Can't receive: $!\n";

Or, use the corresponding methods on an IO::Socket object:

use IO::Socket;

$server->send($data_to_send, $flags)
    or die "Can't send: $!\n";

$server->recv($data_read, $flags)
    or die "Can't recv: $!\n";

To find out whether data can be read or written, use the select function, which is nicely wrapped by the standard IO::Socket class:

use IO::Select;

$select = IO::Select->new();
$select->add(*FROM_SERVER);
$select->add($to_client);

@read_from = $select->can_read($timeout);
foreach $socket (@read_from) {
    # read the pending data from $socket
}

Discussion

Sockets handle two completely different types of I/O, each with attendant pitfalls and benefits. The normal Perl I/O functions used on files (except for seek and sysseek) work for stream sockets, but datagram sockets require the system calls send and recv, which work on complete records.

Awareness of buffering issues is particularly important in socket programming. That’s because buffering, while designed to enhance performance, can interfere with the interactive feel that ...