I do wonder, however, whether you have considered using some form of digest mechanism in your method? Do you think this is worthwhile?

Perhaps. The Apache::Htpasswd module already stores the passwords in encryped form. Apache's .htpasswd file format supports using hashes instead of encrypted data, but the module doesn't appear to support this feature. For just transfering the password, it couldn't hurt to use a digester.

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I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated