Sounds to me like you probably want the Net::HTTP::NB module (a non-blocking HTTP client), and especially its read_response_headers method. See the module for example and description, but in a nutshell you can do this:

  use Net::HTTP::NB;
  my $s = Net::HTTP::NB->new( Host => 'www.perlmonks.org' );
  $s->write_request( GET => "/" );
  my( $code, $msg, %headers ) = $s->read_response_headers;
[download]

(However, don't actually do it like that. See the module for a better example.)

jdporter
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