Need to check POP3 email

Hey there!

I have this problem: i'm in need to check the subject from e-mails from some generic account. This subjects are used as parameters for some program.
The thing is, i can do the second, but not the first. I don't know how to handle POP3 accounts from shell. Is there an application that could use this kind of email accounts, or some configuration to replace the common shell mail account (that one which is managed by the command "mail" and the messages are saved in the /var/mail) for a POP3 one?

Thanks in advance!

And sorry for my bad english!

check out fetchmail
Cheers