#! perl -sw use 5.010; $data = do { local $/ = undef; }; say join ':', scalar( $data =~ tr[\n][\n] ), scalar($data =~ s/\n/\n/g), scalar($data =~ s/(\w+)/$1/g), length($data) ; my $x = [ scalar( $data =~ tr[\n][\n] ), scalar($data =~ s/\n/\n/g), scalar($data =~ s/(\w+)/$1/g), length($data) ]; say "@$x"; __DATA__ Line1 Word Something Line2 Other Word