I'm not sure, whether or not, this will help, but maybe osascript (man osascript) is something you could use to couple perl and PS (or any scriptable application).

osascript can take any Applescript source and can execute it. So if your perl generates applescript, it can manage scriptable applications.

For example:

open (OSASCRIPT , '| osascript -');
print OSASCRIPT <<OSASCRIPT;
    tell application "iTunes"
        if the player state is playing then
            pause
            return "Pause"
        else
            play
            return "Play"
        end if
    end tell
OSASCRIPT
close OSASCRIPT;
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