I currently have my wg311 pci wireless card successfully connecting to the internet via my netgear wgr646 router (access point)

I have to issue the wep key (hexadecimal, 26 characters) every time i turn on the computer, so i added the line
iwconfig ath0 key XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (the X's representing my key)
to my local startup script in /etc/rc.d/rc.local, along with other commands to bring up my ath0 interface

the key is of course blatantly stated in that file; is there another file or another way to bring up my card without revealing my wep key?
for example, in windows, I enter the wep key once, and it is dotted out after that; is there a way to do this in linux?

Put that line in a separate script, owned by root and chmod the script:
chmod 700 yourscript
Then only root can read it.

Call the hidden script from your startup script. This should work because the startup scripts have root access.

Mark.

--edit-- ok that last sentence was not quite phrased correctly, the init process that runs the startup scripts has root access, or something, I think you get the idea though.

this is currently what I have done, thx

is there any other way, to just completely hide the key? (not that i'm worried about having the key read; just for the sake of information)