Hello Guys,
First steps with Web Programming, I tried using the module Mail::POP3Client to check letters in an email account I have and download the messages from there. I noticed that explicitly setting the port number in constructing the $mail object would cause "$mail->Count" to return -1 which indicates a connection error:

you have -1 new Message(s)
[download]

Whereas setting the SSL connectivity to true instead would make the program work just fine... It is not immediately clear to me why -1 is returned in the first case, I have configured POP settings and support including the port numbers as per instructions from Gmail. An explanation of this behavior is what I am curious to find out about...

use strict;
use warnings;
use Mail::POP3Client;

my $userName = 'name@gmail.com';
my $password = 'password';
my $mail = new Mail::POP3Client(
   USER    =>$userName,
   PASSWORD=>$password,
   HOST    =>"pop.gmail.com",
   #PORT=> 995,            #returns -1, not working
   USESSL  =>'true'      #changes the port# to 995,working.
   );

#checking for messages:
if($mail->Count){
                 print "you have @{[$mail->Count]} new Message(s)\n";
                 print "saving Message(s) to file\n";
                 open(FileHandle, '>',"gmailMails.txt")or die("$!\n");
                 
                 for(my $index =1;$index<=$mail->Count;$index++){
                            print FileHandle $mail->HeadAndBody($index
+);
                            }
                 close FileHandle;
                 }
[download]

My other pending issue is with the module Mail::Mailer, since it is based on the 'sendmail' *nix program what alternatives are there for me on Win systems so that I can send emails through, I'm considering Mail::Sender, what do you advice me of?...