"... rather than just getting a quick fix to the problem"

Yes sure. But i guess that what BrowserUK answered in 2002 might be of interest ;-) I modified the code a bit:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @array = qw(dog cat sheep dog dog cat);

my ( $temp, $count ) = ( "@array", 0 );

( $count = $temp =~ s/($_)//g ) and printf "%2d:%s\n", $count, $_ for 
+@array;

__END__

karls-mac-mini:monks karl$ ./1138451.pl
3:dog
2:cat
1:sheep
[download]

Please see Re: Count duplicates in array. for the original code.

Best regards, Karl