my $server = new IO::Socket::INET (
	Proto     => 'tcp',
	LocalPort => $socketnum,
	Listen    => '1',
	Reset	  => '1'
);

It's also probably worth reading the chapter on sockets in the Perl Cookbook. Especially considering that I was in a rush to get this project done quickly; I might have done things differently with more time to explore the intricacies of the module.

With that in mind, here's what I did after declaring the new socket object.

unless($server) {
	die "Can't create server on port $socketnum\n";
}

ps -ef | grep jgr225

kill [appropriate pids]

$server->autoflush(1);

my $handler;

while ($handler = $server->accept()) {

	$handler or die "accept: $!\n";

	my $peeraddr = $handler->peeraddr;
	printf "accept %s\n\n", $handler->peerhost;

	while(defined ($line = <$handler>)){

	}

	print "Bye $alias!\n";
}

... and wait for a new connection.

In practice, this doesn't happen until a new client arrives. That is to say, it would be nice to say goodbye when the client is turned off, but in fact this doesn't happen until the client is switched off and on (and a new socket connection is initiated). This makes sense, sort of, because no communication is not a sign that the client has left. In fact, it could just be resting.

Or perhaps, there's a simple solution I didn't consider. Which is entirely possible and in fact more than likely.

$SIG{'PIPE'} = 'IGNORE';

Popping this at the head of your script should keep things running once a client leaves.

To solve this problem, you can do lots of things: fork the processes, use the select() command, create a buffered array of clients ... all of which were too complicated for me to explore given time constraints. So, in the Perl spirit ("there's more than one way to do it," remember?) I cheated a bit. I ran two servers in two different terminals, each listening to a different port. Each wrote their client's input to a shared file as soon as it was recieved, and read the shared file every second to stay-up-to-date with the conversation. So they indeed talked to each other -- just not within the same process. A somewhat inefficient hack, and not scaleable, but worked fine for my purposes.