Reading mail from CLI with Mutt

["Carl Klatsky" <cklatsky@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I have been in search of an email client the can send/receive emails
using only the CLI, so I can easily hook into it from Perl or Expect
scripts.  It seems like Mutt may fit the bill, but I cannot seem to read
from the CLI only.  I have sSMTP setup to send mail, but for reading
mail I only have IMAP access to our mail server.  I have Mutt running
and both send & receive from inside the character-graphic application
screens.  I can also send an e-mail directly from the shell with a
command like:

mutt -s "Test Results" my_team_alias < test_results.txt

Now my question is can I read a received e-mail from the shell without
launching into the character-graphics app?  I am trying to parse for a
specific message to trigger a script to start.  Maybe there's a whole
different way to do this, but I thought Mutt might solve both my sending
and receiving needs.

Thanks,
Carl