I need a little script to get mail from a POP/IMAP (either works) mail account and pass it to a script mimicking the way a script alias would work. I need this because I can not use script aliases on my host and their work around did not work for me. I need this for several projects all involving the same software back end that needs script aliased mail for some features. I plan on running this from cron about every 10 minutes to keep it running smoothly and I imagine that the number of emails the script will need to process per run will be very low so it does not need a lot of optimization.

Thank you to anyone who can help me with this, I tried to do it myself but I could not find enough documentation and I do not know enough OO PHP to figure this out. This would preferably be in PHP though python would work well and ruby should work as well as long as it does not need any gems installed as I have not figured them out yet.

I'm a tad confused, which part exactly are you having trouble with? The POP/SMTP interfacing? The cron?

First it is not SMTP, this is only for incoming mail. The issue is interfacing with either a POP or IMAP server and what format the data is passed to a script in when an account is a script alias. I understand cron to the level needed.