Yeah, there is a callback available to LWP that manually handles the data. It is used mostly for progress meters. When you use this callback, you MUST handle the filehandle yourself. You can google for "lwp progress', or here is a bare bones snippet:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use LWP::UserAgent;

# don't buffer the prints to make the status update
$| = 1;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
my $received_size = 0;
my $url = 'http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/J/JG/JGOFF/parrot-0_0_7.tgz'
+;
print "Fetching $url\n";
my $request_time = time;
my $last_update = 0;
my $response = $ua->get($url,
                        ':content_cb'     => \&callback,
                        ':read_size_hint' => 8192,
                       );
print "\n";

sub callback {
  my ($data, $response, $protocol) = @_;

  my $total_size = $response->header('Content-Length') || 0;
  $received_size += length $data;

  # FIXME: write the $data to a filehandle or whatever should happen
  # with it here.

  my $time_now = time;

  # this to make the status only update once per second.
  return unless $time_now > $last_update or $received_size == $total_s
+ize;
  $last_update = $time_now;

  print "\rReceived $received_size bytes";
  printf " (%i%%)", (100/$total_size)*$received_size if $total_size;
  printf " %6.1f/bps", $received_size/(($time_now-$request_time)||1)
     if $received_size;
}
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