Password in connection string

I'm using PEAR and a MySQL database. My connection string contains <user>:<password> and works fine. But I don't like having passwords in clear text. Is there any way for me to not have to code the password but instead let MySQL find it in a my.cnf file? I've tried with <user>=mysql, which is the owner of mysqld, and I've put the password in the [client] section of mysql's home directory. What's happening is that by omitting the password in the connection string, the connection is attempted with "using password=NO". This is unlike the behavior of other clients for mysql. Is there any way to do this? BTW, I've found one "solution" to be: put the setting of the connection string, which is a $_SESSION variable, in a file that's not in the document root, then REQUIRE that file.