Very Basic Perl Question about Sockets .. and IRC

[Contraversy]

Ok, I hope I am asking this in the correct place. I have a simple IRC Client that I want to make, there are a plethora of code snippets online for this. And I have 1/2 of a working client. It connects, responds to the PING requests and can even auto reply to any commands I want it to recognize and reply to. But my problem is, I don't want a bot that idles or auto-replies. I want a basic, bare-bones client that can send messages as well as receive them. If I try to add a loop/command to send a message it stops the entire loop and waits for me to input. I tried this in C++ using a non-blocking input command and still couldn't send any information. My Main Question, do I have to open an extra socket? Simply for sending messages that I input?

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
# irc.pl
# A simple IRC robot.
# Usage: perl irc.pl

use strict;

# We will use a raw socket to connect to the IRC server.
use IO::Socket;

# The server to connect to and our details.
my $server = "irc.servercentral.net";
my $nick = "opti__";
my $login = "opti__";


# The channel which the bot will join.
my $channel = "#contraversy";

# Connect to the IRC server.
my $sock = new IO::Socket::INET(PeerAddr => $server,
                                PeerPort => 6667,
                                Proto => 'tcp') or
                                    die "Can't connect\n";

# Log on to the server.
print $sock "NICK $nick\r\n";
print $sock "USER $login 8 * :contraIRC\r\n";

# Read lines from the server until it tells us we have connected.
while (my $input = <$sock>) {
    # Check the numerical responses from the server.
    if ($input =~ /004/) {
        # We are now logged in.
        last;
    }
    elsif ($input =~ /433/) {
        die "Nickname is already in use.";
    }
}

# Join the channel.
print $sock "JOIN $channel\r\n";




# Keep reading lines from the server.
while (my $input = <$sock>) {
    chop $input;
    if ($input =~ /^PING(.*)$/i) {
        # We must respond to PINGs to avoid being disconnected.
        print $sock "PONG $1\r\n";
    }
    else {
    # Print the raw line received by the bot.
        print "$input\n";
    }
}

PS if you run this and try to send a message its in the RFC format "PRIVMSG #channelornick :message here \r\n" <-- The CRLF is required also. Any help will be appreciated! Thanks!

[Tanktalus]

There are a few approaches available here. The most obvious might be to use threads - one thread that would read from the socket (blocking), a second thread to write to the socket (blocks on the input queue used to feed it stuff to send), and a third to read from stdin (perhaps using Term::ReadLine). I'm not sure if that middle thread is quite needed, though it would handle race conditions between the first and last threads for sending stuff to the IRC server.

Personally, I do this basic type of thing with a single thread using event-based code, usually AnyEvent/Coro, though some will swear by POE. And, with a new enough Term::ReadLine, you can integrate it with Coro fairly well, or other event loops not quite so well, but still passably if done with Term::ReadLine being your main event loop (see Term::ReadLine::Event for example code), though there's always the issue of spitting stuff to the screen (input from IRC server) while waiting at a prompt.

That's for "this basic type of thing." For this specific type of thing (IRC), I use Xchat and perl plugins to Xchat.

[Contraversy]

Thank you so much, more than enough info here to do what I need!

[zentara]

I want a basic, bare-bones client that can send messages as well as receive them.

Try this basic forking client code.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use IO::Socket;

my ( $host, $port, $kidpid, $handle, $line );

( $host, $port ) = ('localhost',1200);

my $name = shift || '';
if($name eq ''){print "What's your name?\n"}
chomp ($name = <>);


# create a tcp connection to the specified host and port
$handle = IO::Socket::INET->new(
    Proto    => "tcp",
    PeerAddr => $host,
    PeerPort => $port
  )
  or die "can't connect to port $port on $host: $!";
$handle->autoflush(1);    # so output gets there right away
print STDERR "[Connected to $host:$port]\n";

# split the program into two processes, identical twins
die "can't fork: $!" unless defined( $kidpid = fork() );

# the if{} block runs only in the parent process
if ($kidpid) {

    # copy the socket to standard output
    while ( defined( $line = <$handle> ) ) {
                      print STDOUT $line;
                      }
    kill( "TERM", $kidpid );    # send SIGTERM to child
}

# the else{} block runs only in the child process
else {

    # copy standard input to the socket
    while ( defined( $line = <STDIN> ) ) {
        print $handle "$name->$line";
    }
}

[Anonymous Monk]

My Main Question, do I have to open an extra socket? Simply for sending messages that I input?

What does the RFC say?