What you type is in bold type. You can get an IMAP connection by telnetting to port 143. You can get an SSL IMAP connection by doing this:

openssl s_client -host <host/ip> -port 993 -crlf

* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE] Courier-IMAP ready. Copyright 1998-2003 Double Precision, Inc. See COPYING for distribution information.

? LOGIN myaccount mypassword

? OK LOGIN Ok.

? LIST "" "*"

* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.foo"

* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.bar"

* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.baz.quux"

* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.frank.fred"

* LIST (\HasChildren) "." "INBOX.baz"

* LIST (\Unmarked \HasChildren) "." "INBOX"

* LIST (\Noselect \HasChildren) "." "INBOX.frank"

? OK LIST completed.

? Select INBOX.foo

* FLAGS (\Draft \Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Recent)

* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Draft \Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen)] Limited

* 7 EXISTS

* 0 RECENT

* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1063918011] Ok

* OK [READ-WRITE] Ok

? FETCH 1 Body

* 1 FETCH (BODY ("text" "plain" NIL NIL NIL "8bit" 1782 37))

? OK FETCH completed.

? FETCH 1 BODY[]

* 1 FETCH (BODY[] {3259}

this is the full text of the message

just pretend it's 3259 bytes long

)

? OK FETCH completed.

? LOGOUT

* BYE Courier-IMAP server shutting down

? OK LOGOUT completed

Easy.