perl -e 'print system("ping -c1 localhost"),"\n$?\n";print $! if ($?==-1)'
PING localhost.tan.us (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.133 ms

--- localhost.tan.us ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.133/0.133/0.133/0.000 ms
0
0