> I'm inclined to say let's use the method David suggested:
>
>      http://user:pass@swish-e.org/protected
>
> because you can specify more than one URL in the spider config file.  But,
> for probably most cases people are only spidering one URL.

Well, sure, if I'd have been thinking clearly I could have taken the easy
way out.  :)  Not sure why I made it harder than it needed to be.  Thanks to
both of you for your suggestion.

> How about this:  Use credentials in the url, if found, or use credentials
> specified in the config like above, or, if "credential => 'prompt:30' it
> will prompt for username and password but only wait 30 seconds?

I had almost this exact code in there to start with -- borrowed from the
lwp-request script that gets installed with LWP.  I'm all for leaving it out
though, now that you've provided a much better solution above.

- Darryl

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  Darryl Friesen, B.Sc., Programmer/Analyst    Darryl.Friesen@usask.ca
  Education & Research Technology Services,     http://gollum.usask.ca/
  Department of Computing Services,
  University of Saskatchewan
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  "Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes"