But this is really the wrong design. If you want to authenticate a user, send the browser a cookie, and note that in a server-side database (even a lightweight database like Cache::FileCache). Then, when that same browser hits your protected area, just verify the cookie credential, turning the authentication into an authorization.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

I'm not really sure it's a good idea though. Why not make a script that authenticates the user, and pass the directory data (which should be in an unreachable location) through the script?

Joost

-- 
#!/usr/bin/perl -np
BEGIN{@ARGV=$0}s(^([^=].*)|=)()s;
=Just another perl hacker\
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If you're trying to just get the data, while passing the authentication to the Basic Authentication you've got set up, you can do it in the following fashion (using LWP):

    use strict; 
    use LWP::UserAgent;

    my $url      = 'https://intranet.com/some/page.html';
    my $browser  = LWP::UserAgent->new();
    $browser->protocols_allowed(["http", "https"]);

    unless ($browser->is_protocol_supported("https")) {
            die "Cannot use https:// URLs\n";
    }

    $browser->credentials("intranet.com:443", "My Realm",
                          "johndoe", "0bScUr3d");

    my $response = $browser->get($url);
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Work with this code snippet, and get something similar working in your CGI.. you should have no trouble from there.

Abigail