Inconsistent ls -l results??

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

This may be more of a unix question than perl question, but here goes. I have two different programs that do the same thing,

$mod = `ls -l $db`;
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In one program, I get for $mod:

-rw-r--r--   1 hroberts 36761119 May 30 01:07 /usr/ncbi/blast/db/temp_
+big/patntdir/patnt.nsq
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while in another I get:

-rw-r--r--   1 hroberts staff    36761119 May 30 01:07 /usr/ncbi/blast
+/db/temp_big/patntdir/patnt.nsq
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Both programs are run as the same user. How in the world does one program get the field for group ownership (staff), and not the other??? This is on Solaris 2.6.

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