I expected to find at least one fully implemented email script. It's not a matter of whether or not I could reinvent the wheel.

Rare is the day that I've seen full blown implementations of things as a program example in the documentation for a module. There's a very good reason for that. Where I work we have an email processing script that reads incoming emails from a Qmail queue and performs autonomous processing of those emails. It handles every concievable popular MIME attachment you can think of. The code consists of around 6000 lines of code scattered around a main script and several modules. I'd hate to download a CPAN module that had that large of an example embedded in it.

Not only that a piece of code given as an example of code to be written by the module is meant to provide an example of that module only. Not the half a dozen or more that you need for a full blown application.

Based on your comments I'd say you started off with a poor understanding of the scope your project. That's a first step. "I want to build a POP client" is not good scope definition.

I'd hate to download a CPAN module that had that large of an example embedded in it.

I think we're talking past each other. I'm not expecting to use a single CPAN module that will just "do" everything. What I'm surprised is the lack of a finished Perl script posted somewhere on the Internet that reads emails in a useful manner. Useful being defined as providing the content in a readable format. No, I'm not implying it should cover every possible contingency. (And please don't split hairs on what "readable" means.) I think you some how got it stuck in your head that I was looking for a single module and went off on that tangent. If you know of something similar to your 6,000 line script posted somewhere, I'd be happy to look and learn from it.