Parsing ping output is not usually a good idea since it varies by machine type. If you are looking for a quick and dirty solution, you may be able to use this... 
# send 1 ping...
system("ping -c 1 $host >/dev/null 2>&1");
if ($?) {
    #  dead perhaps, or just plain slow
} else {
    #  alive
}

[download]
I'm not claiming this is good code, just easy to write, so if you need accuracy especially when a machine is slow to reply, don't use it. Also, you'll want to test this on your system's command line to make sure it returns sane exit codes -- all ping binaries are not created equal...

In reply to Re: Handling output from nslookup and ping by bluto
in thread Handling output from nslookup and ping by Anonymous Monk

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