pop3 communication

Hi folks, Just mulling over the prospect of future projects, and I fancy writing a php script that can check the details of my unread email in a pop3 mailbox (ie sender, date and subject). Does anyone have (or know where I can get) functions that have been written to do this task? From my knowledge of the php functions, there isn't one that can do this automatically for me, which leaves me (I'd imagine) with using sockets and actually negotiating with the server directly. So, anyone done this already? Feasible? Anyone see any problems? Appreciate the input Ross