my %counts;
++$counts{$_} for @array;
print("There are $counts{$_} element(s) of $_\n")
   for sort keys %counts;
[download]

Thanks a lot ikegami, very elegant and short solution :)
(: Life is short enjoy it :)

This sounds a lot like homework to me. But there is one rule of thumb in Perl - whenever you think of "unique", think "hash". Using a hash, with the array elements as keys and the count as values will give you an easy solution to your problem. Now all you have to do is write the code.

use strict;
use warnings;
use List::Util "reduce";
use Lingua::EN::Inflect "inflect";
use Algorithm::Loops "MapCar";

my @array = qw/A B C B D B D/;
print
map { map ( inflect("There PL(is,$_) $_ PL(element,$_) of "), $_->[1] 
+), "$_->[0]\n" }
MapCar { [@_] }
map { [sort keys %$_], [@$_{sort keys %$_}] }
reduce { $a->{$b||$b}++; $a } {},
@array
;
[download]

Update: replaced an ugly reduce with MapCar.
Update: additional topicalization

The solution offered by ikegami is really the Right Thing here, but - just to be silly -

#!/usr/bin/perl -wl
use strict;

my @a;
$a[ord($_)-65]++ for <DATA>;
print "There are $a[$_] element(s) of ", chr($_+65) for 0..$#a;

__DATA__
A
B
C
D
A
B
A
C
A
D
[download]

Life is too short to spend it reinventing wheels - use CPAN. In this case the various List modules will likely have what you need. Enjoy.

Counting repeated elements isn't exactly reinventing a wheel. What List modules/functions did you have in mind? (My List::Util::reduce solution was by way of a joke; I hadn't seen your post when I wrote it.)
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Oh ysth! Look at the OP's sig, then look again at my reply. ;)

Although actually List::Uniq would seem to fit quite well.

---

Perl's payment curve coincides with its learning curve.

My constraint: Don't use a hash!

my @array = qw/A B C B D B D/;
my $c=1;
foreach my $k (sort @array) { 
    next if --$c;
    $c= scalar grep { $_ eq $k } @array;
    print "There are $c element(s) of $k\n";
}
[download]

Update: Fixed thanks to gashos coment.

It failed test with my @array = qw/history historyA historyB history historyA D/;
(: Life is short enjoy it :)