LWP::Simple is SO useful, everyone should have it installed anyway =) Why are so many of us so big on using modules? Well, if you want to solve a problem, why not use a tool that's been tested again and again and again and found to work? Why bother rewriting something that's already been done WELL?

A big issue here is how robust you want your script to be -- you can roll your own version, but it's not going to be as versatile and fault-tolerant as one that uses LWP::Simple.

If all you want is a means of retrieving a web page, then you should be able to rely on your users having something like lynx installed (if they're on *nix-ish systems), or, heck, just tell them to download lynx =). Getting a page via lynx is as simple (as was pointed out above) as lynx --dump <url>.

If you INSIST on doing it in perl, then you're going to have to understand the HTTP protocol; I won't bother to do the search myself, but I seem to recall "getting a web page without LWP" being a thread on here recently. Good luck!

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor