If I may add a suggestion, you should look at using HTTP::Request::Common to simplify this code.

HTTP::Request::Common has a routine called POST, which does almost the same thing as what you are doing with HTTP::Request, only in less steps.

Using these two modules your code changes to something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use URI;
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
use LWP::UserAgent;

my $username = 'username';
my $password = 'password';
my $subject  = 'subject';
my $comments = 'comment';
my $post     = 'post';
my $url      = 'http://www.somesite.com';

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $result = $ua->request(POST $url, [
  id       => '20010131',
  username => $username,
  password => $password,
  subject  => $subject,
  comments => $post,
  submit   => 'Submit',
]);

print $result->as_string;

__END__
[download]

---

---

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.