If you want to count all WORD occurrences within a string (but not within substrings), you can do the following using the goatse operator:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $string = 'How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck cou
+ld chuck wood?';
my $woodCount = () = $string =~ /\bwood\b/g;
print $woodCount; # prints 2
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Hope this helps!

Perfect ! Thanks a lot..it works

You're most welcome!

See also perlsecret for more fathomless stuff. I didn't know that too :-(

Update: Fixed typo...

Regards, Karl

«The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

use Benchmark(cmpthese);
cmpthese(100_000, {
    'a' => sub {
        $_ = 'this that this those this these.';
        $a = () = /this/g;
    },
    'b' => sub {
        $_ = 'this that this those this these.';
        $a++ while(s/this//);
    }
});
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      Rate   a   b
a 458716/s  -- -7%
b 492611/s  7%  --
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Hi, the strange thing is that, replicating your benchmark (together with a third solution), I get a much higher advantage for the 'a' solution than what you got:

$ perl -e 'use Benchmark(cmpthese);
cmpthese(1000000, {
     "a" => sub {
        $_ = "this that this those this these.";
        $a = () = /this/g;
    },
     "b" => sub {
        $_ = "this that this those this these.";
        $a++ while(s/this//);
    },
     "c"  => sub {
         $_ = "this that this those this these.";
         $a = s/this/this/g;
    }
});'
      Rate    a    b    c
a 282406/s   -- -28% -28%
b 390778/s  38%   --  -1%
c 393391/s  39%   1%   --
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Note that I had to use one million iterations, with 100_000 I got the "too few iterations" warning.

ummm you mean a disadvantage?

use Benchmark(cmpthese);
cmpthese(1000000, {
    'a' => sub {
        $_ = 'this that this those this these.';
        $a = () = /this/g;
    },
    'b' => sub {
        $_ = 'this that this those this these.';
        $a++ while(s/this//);
    },
    'c' => sub {
        $_ = 'this that this those this these.';        
        $a = s/this/this/g;
    }
});
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my machine shows that your 'c' option is the fastest of these


      Rate    a    b    c
a 478240/s   --  -4% -19%
b 497018/s   4%   -- -16%
c 588235/s  23%  18%   --
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my $count = $string =~ s/word/word/g;
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