use 5.008;
my @cmd = ('cat', '/usr/share/dict/words');
die '@cmd must have more than one element' unless @cmd>1;
open my $fh, '-|', @cmd or die $!;
my $sum = 0;
while (<$fh>) {
	chomp;
	$sum+=length;
}
close $fh or die $! ? $! : $?;
print "$sum\n";