You could do something like

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::Ping;

my $down;
my $host = $ARGV[0];
my $host2 = $ARGV[1];

my $rc = ( PING($host)  == 0 ) ? "$host is up" :
         ( PING($host2) == 0 ) ? "$host2 is up" :
         "Neither $host or $host2 are reachable";

print "$rc\n";
sub PING
{
    my $host = shift;
    my $p = Net::Ping->new("icmp");

    return ( $p->ping($host) ) ? 0 : 1;
}
[download]

Just want to note though that you could hit ports on each machine and it may be a bit more reliable than icmp.... To do that I use something like the following and you don't need to be root to run it ( assuming you are using a UNIX-ish OS...

From perldoc Net::Ping

If the "icmp" protocol is specified, the ping() method sends
an icmp echo message to the remote host, which is what the
UNIX ping program does.  If the echoed message is received
from the remote host and the echoed information is correct,
the remote host is considered reachable.  Specifying the
"icmp" protocol requires that the program be run as root or
that the program be setuid to root.
[download]

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use IO::Socket::INET;
use Getopt::Long;

my @hosts   = "";
my $timeout = "2";
#my $port    = "";
my @ports   = "";
my $opts    = GetOptions(
    "host=s"    => \@hosts,
    "port=s"    => \@ports,
    "timeout=s" => \$timeout
);

@hosts = split /,/, join( ',', @hosts );

die "usage: sp -h <host|IP> [ -h <host|IP> ] -p <port> [ -p <port> ]\n
+" unless $hosts[1];

shift @ports;

for my $host (@hosts) {
        next if $host eq '';
        for my $port (@ports)
        {
            my $status = ( connection( $host, $port ) == 0 ) ? "Up" : 
+"Down";
            my $line = sprintf(" %-20s %-5s %-1s", $host, $port, $stat
+us);
            print $line . "\n";
        }
}

##############
sub connection
##############
{
        my $host     = shift;
        my $tcp_port = shift;

        return ( IO::Socket::INET->new(
            Timeout  => $timeout,
            PeerAddr => $host,
            PeerPort => $tcp_port,
            Proto    => 'tcp' ) ) ? 0 : 1;
}

perl sp.pl -h google.com -h yahoo.com -p 80
 google.com           80    Up
 yahoo.com            80    Up
[download]

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