$ time perl -e 'print "start program. \n"; exec ("time ls -lR /usr | wc &");'
start program.

real    0m0.090s
user    0m0.045s
sys     0m0.030s

Laurent ~
$   36311  269214 1917392

real    0m4.102s
user    0m1.200s
sys     0m2.963s