Here's what I wrote to check my POP3 box, mostly stolen from Lincoln's stellar Network Programming With Perl. I added some functionality to make it fetch a message if I specify -r n.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use constant VERSION => '1.03';

use strict;
use Net::POP3;
use Mail::Header;
use Term::ReadPassword;
use Getopt::Long;

use lib ".";
use Config::rc;

my $filename = "~/.mcheckrc";
my $rcfile = new Config::rc( $filename ) or die $Config::rc::Error, "\
+n";

my $host = $rcfile->parm( "host" ) or die "Mail host not specified in 
+$filename\n";
my $user = $rcfile->parm( "user" ) or die "User name not specified in 
+$filename\n";

my $readno = 0;
GetOptions( "r=i", \$readno );

my $password = read_password( "Password: " ) || exit 0;

my $pop = Net::POP3->new( $host, Timeout=>30 ) or die "Can't connect t
+o $host: $!\n";
my $messages = $pop->login( $user, $password ) or die "Can't log in: "
+, $pop->message, "\n";
my $last = $pop->last;
$messages += 0;  # In case it's "OEO" (zero but true)

print "mcheck v", VERSION, ": Inbox has $messages messages (", $messag
+es-$last," new)\n";

if ( ($readno > 0) && ($readno <= $messages) ) {
        my $lines = $pop->get($readno);
        print @$lines, "\n";
} else {
        for my $msgnum (reverse(1..$messages)) {
                my $header = $pop->top( $msgnum );
                my $parsedhead = Mail::Header->new($header);
                chomp( my $subject = $parsedhead->get('Subject'));
                chomp( my $from = $parsedhead->get('From'));
                $from = clean_from($from);
                printf "%4d %-25s %-50s\n", $msgnum, $from, $subject;
        } # for
} # else
$pop->quit;

sub clean_from {
        local $_ = shift;

        /^"([^\"]+)" <\S+>/     && return $1;
        /^([^<>]+) <\S+>/       && return $1;
        /^\S+ \(([^\)]+)\)/     && return $1;

        return $_;
}
[download]

Oh yah, it uses a Config::rc module that I've been working on, but you can just hardcode your server and username if you want.

xoxo,
Andy

%_=split/;/,".;;n;u;e;ot;t;her;c; ".   #   Andy Lester
'Perl ;@; a;a;j;m;er;y;t;p;n;d;s;o;'.  #   http://petdance.com
"hack";print map delete$_{$_},split//,q<   andy@petdance.com   >