#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $count = 0; while (){ $count++ while m/[a-zA-Z]\w*/g; } print $count, $/; __DATA__ 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