#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my ($chars, $lines, @word, $word_cnt, $mystring, $bla );

$lines = 0;

while(<DATA>) {
    $chars += length($_);
    $lines++ ;
    my @word = split " ", $_;
    $word_cnt += @word;
    ($bla = $_) =~ s/\W//g; # assign the converted string of $_ to $bla
     $mystring .= lc($bla); # concatenate lowercase $bla to $mystring
}

print ("Lines: $lines\n");
print ("Words: $word_cnt\n");
print ("Characters: $chars\n");

print("Total String: $mystring \n");

__DATA__
Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle.