c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "use Data::Dumper; ;; my $rx_name = qr{ \b [[:alpha:]]+ \b }xms; ;; my $str = 'iowq john stepy andy anne alic bert stepy anne bert andy step alic andy'; ;; my @names = $str =~ m{ $rx_name }xmsg; print Dumper \@names; ;; my %hash; ++$hash{$_} for @names; print Dumper \%hash; " $VAR1 = [ 'iowq', 'john', 'stepy', 'andy', 'anne', 'alic', 'bert', 'stepy', 'anne', 'bert', 'andy', 'step', 'alic', 'andy' ]; $VAR1 = { 'john' => 1, 'stepy' => 2, 'alic' => 2, 'bert' => 2, 'andy' => 3, 'step' => 1, 'anne' => 2, 'iowq' => 1 };