Hi again :) The following code (I plan to implement the piped open shortly, but just used what I have to test the memory usage of the hashes in the two approaches)

my @raw=`top -b -n 1`;
my (%stats,%stats2);
my $expected_keys = 5;
@stats{'users','load','tmem','fmem','runproc'} = ();
my $its=0;

foreach my $line (@raw){
  if ($line =~ /up\s.+\s(\d+)\suser.+\s+load\saverage:\s+(\d+\.\d{2}),
+/){
    $stats{users}=$1;
    $stats{load}=$2;
    $stats2{users}=$1;
    $stats2{load}=$2;
  }
  elsif ($line =~ /(?:Tasks|processes):.+\s+(\d+) running/i){
    $stats{runproc}=$1;
    $stats2{runproc}=$1;
  }
  elsif ($line =~ /^Mem:\s+(\d+)k\s+(?:total|av),.+used,\s+(\d+)k\s+fr
+ee/){
    $stats{tmem}=$1;
    $stats{fmem}=$2;
    $stats2{tmem}=$1;
    $stats2{fmem}=$2;
  }
  $its++;
  print scalar(%stats2);
  print scalar(%stats);
  (scalar(keys(%stats2)) == $expected_keys) && last;
} ## end foreach my $line (@raw)
[download]

outputs

2/8
4/8
2/8
4/8
2/8
4/8
4/8
4/8

So the memory usage is no different (correct me if I am wrong--my understanding is that the number we are worried about (if we're worried about memory consumption) is the divisor).

I'll go ahead and make the call to `top` a piped open and have done with it. Thanks for your help (everyone who posted).

T.