Hi mbdc566021,

Your code looks like it has just been cobbled together with snippets from various sources. This is OK, but don't be afraid to make changes and experiment with the code to see what happens. Here are a few points:

• You do not need the while loop, which incidently is not completed anyway. In this context while(<READFILE>) is used to read the file line by line, but since you previously slurped the file, all of it has been read into the $filecontents variable. So a while loop is not needed here.
   
• Incrementing a hash as suggested by apl: $CharCount{$characters}++ Only works for this inside a loop structure. You are trying to combine two different techniques.
   
• You will need to experiment with your regexes to get the matches you want. If you have a copy of Programming Perl Study the chapter on Pattern Matching, and/or check the Tutorials section of Perlmonks. Also, see annotated code below:

# this matches each character once
$filecontents =~ m/./g;

# this version also puts a copy of each match into @characters
my @characters = $filecontents =~ m/./g;

# this counts the number of elements in @characters
my $CharCount = scalar @characters;

# to verify your regex is matching correctly
# this will print a list of each item counted:
for (@characters){
    print "$_ \n";
}
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Good luck with your assignment.