I proposed this part of code

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

my @machines =( 'host1.foo.com' , 'host2.foo.com' , 'host3.foo.com' );

my $HTML = "\n\n\n";
for ( @machines ) {
    $HTML .= $machine.': '.`ping $_`;
}
$HTML .= "\n\n\n";
print $HTML
[download]

i write $html="\n\n\n"; to replace the tree lines which seem really not beautiful.
Sure it's the same but shorter.
The content will be automaticly put on the STDOUT by using a print command.