HTTP response: printed as gibberish?

I've written a very short (and incomplete) HTTP proxy server. When I print out the HTTP response, it sometimes appears as gibberish, whereas sometimes they are printed out fine (is this an issue with big endian/little endian or something completely different?)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use IO::Socket;

$SIG{PIPE} = "IGNORE";

my $proxy_port=shift(@ARGV);
$proxy_port=8080 unless $proxy_port =~ /d+/;
my $hostname=`hostname`;
chop $hostname;

# Setup socket
$sock = new IO::Socket::INET (LocalHost => $hostname,
LocalPort => $proxy_port,
Proto => 'tcp',
Listen => 5,
Reuse => 1
);
die "Listening Socket could not be created: $!" unless $sock;

# Accept connection request
while ($client_sock = $sock->accept()) {
$clientaddr = getpeername $client_sock ;
($port,$iaddr) = sockaddr_in($clientaddr);
$clientname = gethostbyaddr ($iaddr, AF_INET);
print "Received Connection Request from: ".inet_ntoa($iaddr)."
";
open CLOG, ">/tmp/clientlog".inet_ntoa($iaddr).".txt" || die "couldn't create client log txt";
open SLOG, ">/tmp/serverlog".inet_ntoa($iaddr).".txt" || die "couldn't create server log txt";
close CLOG; close SLOG;

# Create child process
if (fork) {
wait;
next;
}

# Receive first line of request
if (defined($firstline = <$client_sock>)) {
print "Received an HTTP request with first line:
";
print $firstline;
open CLOG, ">/tmp/clientlog".inet_ntoa($iaddr).".txt" || die "couldn't create client log txt";
print CLOG $firstline;
close CLOG;
($modifiedfirstline,$remote_host,$remote_port)=analyze_request($firstline);
print "Modified firstline:
";
print $modifiedfirstline;
$server_sock=server_connect($modifiedfirstline,$remote_host,$remote_port);
print $server_sock $modifiedfirstline;
while (defined($buf=<$client_sock>)) {
print "Received from Client:
".$buf."
";
open CLOG, ">>/tmp/clientlog".inet_ntoa($iaddr).".txt" || die "couldn't create client log txt";
print CLOG $buf;
close CLOG;
next if ($buf =~ /Proxy-Connection:/);
print $server_sock $buf;
last if ($buf =~ /^[sx00]*$/);
}
listen_for_response($server_sock, $client_sock);
}
}

sub analyze_request {
($request)=@_;
print "Received this request:
$request
";
if ($request =~ m#(GET|POST|HEAD) http://([^/:]+):?(d*)#) {
$method=$1;
$remote_host=$2;
$remote_port=$3;
print "Recognized HTTP request
";
}

print "Received request for remote_host $remote_host at port $remote_port...
";

# Remove remote hostname from URL
$request =~ s/http://[^/]+//;
#$request .="

";
#$request =~ s/(GET|POST|HEAD)(s*)(HTTP(.*))/$1 index.html $3/ ;

return $request,$remote_host,$remote_port;
}

sub server_connect {
($request,$remote_host,$remote_port) = @_;
if ($remote_port !~ /^d+$/) {
$remote_port = 80;
}
$server_sock = new IO::Socket::INET (PeerAddr => $remote_host,
PeerPort => $remote_port,
Proto => 'tcp',
);
die "Server Socket could not be created: $!" unless $server_sock;
print "Connected to server $remote_host at port $remote_port";
print "Request sent to server:
$request";
#print $server_sock $request;
return $server_sock;
}

sub listen_for_response {
($server_sock, $client_sock) = @_;
while (defined($buf = <$server_sock>)) {
print "Received response from server
$buf
";
open SLOG, ">>/tmp/serverlog".inet_ntoa($iaddr).".txt" || die "couldn't create server log txt";
print SLOG $buf;
close SLOG;
print $client_sock $buf;
}
print "Finished receiving...
";
# finished sending response to client, close sockets
close $server_sock;
close $client_sock;
}