Better would be one of the two following snippets:

while (defined ($buf = <$new_sock>))
{
    if ($buf =~ /"END"/)
    {
    }
}
----
while (defined ($buf = <$new_sock>))
{
    chomp $buf;
    if ($buf eq '"END"')
    {
    }
}
[download]

The first does a regex, avoiding the newline issue. The second removes the trailing newlines, then does a string comparison.

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