Let's see.... could a module do the trick? A search on ping on search.cpan.org returns... Net::Ping! This should both give you a convenient way to get the data in Perl, without having to resort to parsing the output of an external program, and solve portability problems if/when you want to use this tool in a different environment.

After installing Net::Ping, a quick glance at the docs, installing Time::Hires, here is a (tested) piece of code that should work:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use Net::Ping;

my $NB_PING=5;
my $host="dslreports.com";

my( $ok, $nok, $total_time)=(0,0,0);

# use the icmp protocol to emulate the unix ping
# note that this implies that the script should be
# run as root (or suid root)
my $p = Net::Ping->new( "icmp");
$p->hires(); # needs Time::Hires

foreach (1..$NB_PING)
  { my ($ret, $duration, $ip) = $p->ping($host, 3); # 3 is the time ou
+t in sec
    if( $ret)
      { $ok++;
        $total_time+= $duration * 1000;
      }
    else
      { $nok++; }
  }
$p->close();

# we don't want division by 0 errors do we?
my $average= $ok ? int($total_time / $ok) : 0;
my $lost= int ( ($nok / ( $ok + $nok)) * 100);

print "$lost%\n$average\n0\n0\n";
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