Here is an explanation of tr. It returns the number of translations it made. Normally you use it to translate one char into another like tr/A-Z/a-z/ which just lowercases $_ If the second part is null....well run the code and see.

$_ ="|Here|are|six|pipe|symbols|";

$pipecount = tr/|//;

print $pipecount ,"\n", $_, "\n";

$pipecount = tr/|/~/;

print $pipecount ,"\n", $_, "\n";
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Good luck.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print