# Declare a hash named fruits.  A hash contains
# { key,value } pairs where the key fields are unique.
my %fruits;

# Get each element in the @fruits array and assign it to
#the { key } portion of the hash.  Also, increment the 
#{ value } part of the hash (the value starts with 0).
#This will count the number of times the { key } appears in
#the array
$fruits{$_}++ for ( @fruits );

#Declare variables for { key, value }
my ( $fruit, $count );

#Get each { key, value } pair and assign them to
#{ fruit, count }
for ( $fruit, $count ) ( each %fruits ) {
    #Print out the number of times the fruit existed.
    print "$fruit => $count\n";
}
[download]

This is a more 'perl baby-talk' version of monktim's code, in which he exploits several perl idioms which you may not be familiar with (yet!):

my %fruit_counts;
foreach my $fruit(@fruit_list) {
  $fruit_counts{$fruit} = $fruit_counts{$fruit} + 1; #lhand for '++'
}

foreach my $fruit(keys %fruit_counts) {
  print "$fruit => ", $fruit_counts{$fruit}, "\n";
}
[download]

This is one of the neatest things about Perl! monktim's code and mine look very different but are very similar in an elemental sense.

The idea is to loop through the original array. For each element, either look up or add that element as a key into a hash, and increments that key's value by one. Since Perl's hashes use autovivification, when we try to look up a non-existing key in a hash, that key will be added.

$hash{$_}++ for @array;
[download]

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @fruit = qw(
      MANGO APPLE GRAPES MANGO MANGO MANGO
      MANGO APPLES APPLES BANANA CORN APPLES
);

my %fruit;
$fruit{$_}++ for @fruit;

print Dumper \@fruit;
print Dumper \%fruit;
[download]

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)