Thank you chromatic! The code in question works perfectly when the $perlmonks variable is changed to "www.perlmonks.org". I guess the upside to this debacle is learning a few different techniques for posting to cookie-login sites, and understanding why many cookies are set in the form: .domain.net

Joy!

Update: Here's the sub using merlyn's instructions for the cookie_jar. When using this code for perlmonks note the odd node_id=>'16046' parameter in the requests. This is done to ensure a small response. In this example it's an xml node. If omitted the monastery gates is returned making the operation much heavier than it needs to be.

sub sendit{
my$message = shift;
my$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

$ua->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new);

my$req = POST ($pmurl, [
op=>'login',user=>$username,passwd=>$password,node_id=>'16046']);

my$res = $ua->request($req);

$req = POST ($pmurl, [
op=>'message',message=>$message,node_id=>'16046']);

$res = $ua->request($req);

print header;
&talk();
}
[download]

Update2: After experimenting i found that the saved cookie file will be empty when merely using:

$ua->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new(file => ".cookies", autosave => 1))
+;
[download]

unless the cookie_jar is told to save cookies without an expiration date by adding the ignore_discard parameter:

$ua->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new(file => ".cookies", autosave => 1, 
+ignore_discard => 1));
[download]

or, better yet, by not using ignore_discard, but instead adding an 'expires' parameter to the login request:

my$req = POST ($pmurl, [
op=>'login',user=>$username,passwd=>$password,expires=>'+10y',node_id=
+>'16046']);
[download]

Thanks merlyn.