system(q{cat text.txt|wc -l| sed 's/^[ \t]*//'|sed 's/[ \t]*$//'});

##</code><code>##

open my $INPUTFILE, '<', 'text.txt' or die "Can't open file!  $!";

##</code><code>##

my $line_count=0;
while (<$INPUTFILE>) { # read a line
    ++$line_count;     # increment counter
}

##</code><code>##

close $INPUTFILE or die "close error: $!";