What about looping through the array with foreach(){} and incrementing either $smallboxes or $largeboxes depending on the value of the currently processed item?

Maybe you should give us some more infromation. Is the number of possible groups of elements fixed? If it's not you may need to do something like this:

foreach (@x) {
 s/\d+$//; # strip the number
 $counts{$_}++
}
foreach my $group (sort keys %counts) {
   print "$group : $counts{$group} times\n";
}
[download]

Update: As arturo correctly points out I have a bug in the code. I'd modify the original array. The loop should look like this

foreach (@x) {
 my $group = $_;
 $group =~ s/\d+$//; # strip the number
 $counts{$group}++
}
[download]

Jenda
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
   -- Rick Osborne

Edit by castaway: Closed small tag in signature

Let me add the caveat that since the

foreach (@foo ) {
}
[download]

construction makes $_ an alias for the current element being processed, that your number stripping substitution modifies the original array, which may or may not be appropriate. To non-destructively process the array, you might capture before the first digit to get your hash key.

If not P, what? Q maybe?
"Sidney Morgenbesser"

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

my %counts;
$counts{$_}++ for @x;
print "$_ occured $counts{$_} times\n" for keys %counts;
[download]