When working with raw bytes, it pays to use the read method. It will block until something is available, then read up to a specified number of bytes:

# from Programming Perl
my $buffer;
while ( read $your_handle, $buffer, 1024 ) {
    # process buffer here
}
[download]

That will read up to 1K from the handle, blocking if nothing is there, but returning whatever is there (the first 1K of it anyway).

The Perl Cookbook is an excellent reference for doing this sort of work.

Phil

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.