Usage: perl [switches] [--] [programfile] [arguments]
  -0[octal]       specify record separator (\0, if no argument)
  -a              autosplit mode with -n or -p (splits $_ into @F)
  -C[number/list] enables the listed Unicode features
  -c              check syntax only (runs BEGIN and CHECK blocks)
  -d[:debugger]   run program under debugger

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/bin/perl -n
s/[^\w]+/ /g;     # replace the non words with space
next if(/^\s*$/); # discard sentence with only spaces
$totalcount += (split(/ /) - 1); # split the sentence using space and count it
END{ print "Total: $totalcount<<\n"; }