SPUG: programmatically managing cookies

[Joel Grow]

Hi Perl gurus,

I'd like to programmatically access a password-protected site.  When I GET 
the url, I receive back HTML with a javascript relay to a login page, and 
a cookie.  I do have credentials for the site.  So I can POST my 
username/password to the login page, but I need to manage the cookie the 
site sets so that I can then be forwarded to the password-protected area. 
Before I dive too deeply into this, does anyone have advice/pointers on 
the best way to manage this?

-J

(my problem would ultimately be solved by NY Times opening up their 
article search API, which is "coming soon"...)