System calls in perl for "ps" and "netstat" - less expensive way?

[Matt Weatherford]

>From PERL, I have been doing some system calls like this:
(see * lines) 


*  my $procentry=`ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep $self->{pid} `;
  chomp $procentry;

  $self->debug(1, "Procentry: [$procentry]");
    if ($procentry =~ /\<defunct\>/ ) {
       $self->debug(1, " <--- closed ssh tunnel. Tunnel proc defunct");
       $tunnelok=0;
    }

*  my $nstat=`netstat -an | grep '127.0.0.1' `;
  chomp $nstat;

  $self->debug(1, "NStat: [$nstat]");
    if (!$nstat) {
       $self->debug(1, " <--- closed ssh tunnel. Netstat result empty");
       $tunnelok=0;
    }


Is this really computationally expensive?
(I already know this makes my code not portable)

Im not calling these very often, is there a better way to do this?

thanks,

Matt