Thanks for that, Anon :-)

Yeah I actually was playing with that example script last night--but sadly it doesn't execute even in stock form.

I'll definitely make a suggestion once I figure it out, though.

edit:I am indeed using curl with backticks at the moment, but my soul burns :-). I did experiement extensively with the various new() method options offered by IO::Socket::SSL to no avail. I guess this is a different sort of "using a cert".

another update: and it also seems true that none of the cpan curl-related modules support this, either. I guess it is a weird thing we are doing :-)