if you want to capture the output from the ping command, in Windows XP, you might want to try something like this:

use warnings;
use strict;

# capture the output from ping
my $ping = qx( ping -n 4 127.0.0.1 );

# extract the values
$ping =~
   m/
   .*
   Sent \s = \s (\d+)
   .*
   Lost \s = \s ([\d\.]+) \s \( ([\d\.]+) % \s loss
   .*
   Average \s = \s ([\d\.]+) ms .*
   /sx
;

my $sent = $1;
my $loss_no = $2;
my $loss_proc = $3;
my $average = $4;

print "Lost $loss_no packets from $sent packets ( $loss_proc % ). ",
      "Average RTT $average ms.\n";
[download]

you might want to take a look at the regular expressions tutorial.

:)))))