Parse emails for commands - cron? huh?

[deft]

I need to do something I'm told that is relatively easy to do, but I can't find specific instructions on how to do it.

I need a way to look at incoming emails and run commands based on key words in them.

For example, incoming email:

Subject: Thing# 123
Body: delivered

when sent to [email][e-mail][/email] will run the command:

php -q ./app.php 123 setstatus="delivered"

...somebody mentioned something about cron and sendmail, blah blah. but I'm a noob, I need step-by-step help.

I'm using Apache on a remotely hosted account, I have SSH access.

[TKS]

Rewrite rules for sendmail are what you're looking for:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_network/x14923.html

Then use this link to help you with cron...or use a X frontend for cron:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Mail-Queue-4.html

For using Cron in XWindows (KDE mainly), see my blog:
http://linux-blog.org/index.php?/archives/112-Schedule-Tasks-in-Linux-with-Ease-Kcron.html