### Always use strict =)
use strict;

### Set up a hash table ("associative array") to associate
### numbers with names
my %totals;

### Open the file
open my $fIN, "<msgcount.txt";

### Read through the file line by line.  Inside the loop, the
### special variable $_ will refer to the "current line" and
### this loop will move to the next line in turn with each
### loop iteration.  It will quit when it runs out of file to read.
###
### I'll define some regexp patterns here, but you could do it
### all at once, of course.  I'm only splitting it here to make
### the code in the loop more readable.
my $date = '\d\d\/\d\d\/\d\d\d\d';   ### Matches MM/DD/YYYY
my $name = '\w+';  ### Matches any number of a-z, A-Z, or _
my $count = '\d+';  ### Matches any number of digits.

while( <$fIN> ) {
   ### We only care about this line if it's our special format.  This
   ### will ignore lines that don't have valid data, such as blanks
   ### trailing blank lines in the file or something.
   ###   matches  01/03/2008 yasmin 67
   if( $_ =~ /($date) ($name) ($count)/ ) {

      ### The parenthases above captured the data in this line (if
      ### applicable).  Now we can access the first, second, and third
      ### matches:
      my $this_date  = $1;   ### The first () field
      my $this_name  = $2;   ### The second () field
      my $this_count = $3;   ### The third () field

      ### Do one thing if the user already has data, and something
      ### else if not.
      if( not exists $totals{$this_name} ) {
         ### If this person isn't already in the hash, add her with
         ### this data.
         $totals{$this_name} = $this_count;
      } else {
         ### This person is already in the hash, so just add to the
         ### existing totals count.
         $totals{$this_name} += $this_count;
      }
   }
}

### Don't forget to close your file.
close $fIN;


### That's it!  Now you've got a hash full of your data (garaunteed
### not to have duplicates =)  Now you can access someone's
### data directly:
print 'yasmin has ' . $totals{'yasmin'} . ' posts.';

### or with a loop
foreach my $username (keys(%totals)) {
   print "User $username has " . $totals{$username} . " posts.\n";
}