Symmetric encryption from shell script/cron job?

[William M. Shubert]

Thanks to everybody who wrote in with suggestions. There were some good
ones, but the best solution came from an anonymous email, which pointed
me to the "--passphrase-fd" switch to gpg which does exactly what I
wanted (let me use symmetric encryption from a cron job). Now I can rest
easy at night, knowing that my data is backed up regularly but nobody
can snoop through it on the remote backup computer. :-)
-- 
				Bill Shubert