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...