Is there any reason you wouldn't want to do this:

my @processes = ();

open (PROCESSES, "ps -fu $user|") or die ("Couldn't open process list:
+ $!");   
       
while ($process = <PROCESSES>) {
     chomp($process);
     my @process = split(/\s+/, $process, 8);
     push @processes, \@process;
}

close PROCESSES;
[download]

Just curious