So use a callback on the response. From lwpcook:

       Or you can process the document as it arrives (second
       $ua->request() argument is a code reference):

         use LWP::UserAgent;
         $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
         $URL = 'ftp://ftp.unit.no/pub/rfc/rfc-index.txt';

         my $expected_length;
         my $bytes_received = 0;
         my $res =
            $ua->request(HTTP::Request->new(GET => $URL),
                      sub {
                          my($chunk, $res) = @_;
                          $bytes_received += length($chunk);
                          unless (defined $expected_length) {
                             $expected_length = $res->content_length |
+| 0;
                          }
                          if ($expected_length) {
                               printf STDERR "%d%% - ",
                                         100 * $bytes_received / $expe
+cted_length;
                          }
                          print STDERR "$bytes_received bytes received
+\n";

                          # XXX Should really do something with the ch
+unk itself
                          # print $chunk;
                      });
          print $res->status_line, "\n";
[download]

I've used this to get the information from the header without having to spend time fetching all the body. You just have to die when you get enough, as it says in LWP::UserAgent:

       The subroutine variant requires a reference to callback 
       routine as the second argument to the request method and 
       it can also take an optional chuck size as the third argu- 
       ment.  This variant can be used to construct "pipe-lined" 
       processing, where processing of received chuncks can begin 
       before the complete data has arrived.  The callback func- 
       tion is called with 3 arguments: the data received this 
       time, a reference to the response object and a reference 
       to the protocol object.  The response object returned from 
       the request method will have empty content.  If the 
       request fails, then the the callback routine is not 
       called, and the response->content might not be empty. 
 
       The request can be aborted by calling die() in the call- 
       back routine.  The die message will be available as the 
       "X-Died" special response header field.
[download]

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.