Wget: Is there a way to pass username and password from a file?

Question

Is there a way to pass the username and password from a file instead of the command line via --user and --password?

Background: I want to run wget via cron and don't want the username/password show up in process view

Answer 1

Use a .wgetrc file (GNU manual, example) in which you can set username and passwords for either or both ftp and http.

To use the same credentials for both specify

user=casper
password=CasperPassword

or individually

ftp_user=casperftp
ftp_password=casperftppass
http_user=casperhttp
http_password=casperhttppass

Answer 2

In many regards curl can be a better choice. Wget became a bit stale over time.

curl's -n switch can be used for this task: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html#-n