use LWP;
my $url = "oldurl";

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $url);

my $res = $ua->request($req);

print $res->status_line;


##</code><code>##

[xorl@xorlsbox ~/tools]$telnet ourdomainname 80
Trying xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx...
Connected to ourdomainanme (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx).
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /olddir HTTP/1.1
host: ourdomainname

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:18:45 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=c100bc24fda84639acb995ae36a4f8c4; path=/
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=17c937ef60bcd4d587ba9f662384292e; path=/
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=66db955db7d2e6987d235d8327b0abee; path=/
Location: /somecrazy/new/location/here/
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Connection closed by foreign host.

##</code><code>##

  my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
  $mech->requests_redirectable([]);
  $mech->get($url);
  print $mech->response->code . " " . $mech->response->header("Location");