I don't find splitting on spaces to be very good at picking out "words". If you just want to count the total number of words, then it works pretty well. But for your task, I find the quite simple:

    @words=  $line =~ /(\w+(?:'\w+)?)/g;
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    @words=  $line =~ /([[:alpha:]]+(?:'[[:alpha:]]+)?)/g;
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These match the common contractions (like "don't", "isn't", "aren't", and "I've" that I've used) but aren't bothered by 'quoting'.

Update: Even better, allow hyphenated-word matching:

    @words=  $line =~ /([[:alpha:]]+(?:[-'][[:alpha:]]+)*)/g;
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So far I can get the total word count set by using the code below. From there I don't know how to place each word into their own hash and count per word rather than count the total number. I knew from the beginning I had to use a regex for this to be more accurate and I think I'll go with the last one you posted but using that confuses me. Would I have to change my for loop to a foreach (keys @words) { @words =~ ...} ?

my $file = "test.txt";
my $count = "0";

open (FILE, $file) or die "Error $!";
my $words = <FILE>;
$count++ for split /\s+/, $words;

print "Count: $count\n";
print "Words: $words\n";
close FILE;
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I suspect a few people may be giving up in head-banging-on-the-desk frustration by now..., so I'll give it a shot. :)

You're so nearly there...you just need to replace a single line there with the line that perlplexer already gave you, which loops over the list from 'split' (using 'for' or 'foreach' - they're synonymous, so you use whichever one you think looks nicer - don't you love a language that takes aesthetics into account?) and increments the value in a corresponding 'words' hash. I'm not going to tell you though which line that is I'm afraid, 'cos methinks the student protesteth overmuch about this not being homework...I prescribe a healthy dose of Camel :)

Cheers,
Ben

I would reccomend $wordhash{lc $word}++; as opposed to $wordhash{$word}++; if you're not worried about case-sensitivity, so you don't end up with:

To: 50
to: 23

Also, if you're going to split on \s+ as everyone seems to be suggesting, don't forget you're going to have to $word =~ s/\W//g to get rid of those unsightly punctuation marks.

--
perl: code of the samurai

This definately isn't homework, heh...sometimes I wish I were still in school though. I know how to open and read files, but I don't understand part #3. How do I split on whitespace? You'd have to split each word into their own variable, that's the part I don't understand.

You can use split to put the words into an array or a list:

my $line  = "This is a line of text";
my @words = split /\s+/, $line;
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Note that the /\s+/ bit technically isn't needed, because split defaults to splitting on whitespace.

There's more info on split on Perldoc.

Hope that helps,
-- Foxcub
A friend is someone who can see straight through you, yet still enjoy the view. (Anon)

Use split(); e.g.,

# Assuming %words is the hash where you keep all the words
$words{$_}++ for split /\s+/, $line;
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--perlplexer

my %count;
my $size = 4;          # minimum size of words to count

while (<>) {
        my @words = split;
        foreach my $word (@words) {
                next if length($word) < $size;

                # Count only "real" words, and words with
                # hyphens and apostrophes, like /foo-bar/
                # and /don't/ and /ma'am/
                $count{$word}++ if $word =~ 
                      m/^[a-z][A-Z]+([-'][a-z][A-Z]+)*$/;
        }
}

my %uniq = keys %count;
unless (%uniq) {
        die "No words in the file\n";
}

foreach my $word (keys %count) {
        $final_count    += $count{$word};
        $final_length   += length($word);
}

# Do some other stuff with your hash
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Update: Fixed a small typo

I was wondering where $word gets it's value in your code. I set @words to <FILE> and the script ran without any known errors but it kept saying there weren't any words in file (as per your die). I tossed in a print $_ after I setup @words to <FILE> and it printed out the document, so we know there's nothing wrong with accessing and reading that file.

I think it has to do with $words not having a value and from your script I can't tell what I'm supposed to give it. One thing I noticed was $count($word) kept on giving me errors so I had to change it to $count{$word}, that could also be where the error resides.

I don't really see how perlplexer's line will solve my problem with displaying each word into a hash and count them, but for the sake of it I'll replace that line in my script.

Thanks.

Boy, this sure sounds like homework. Whatever the case, and especially if it is homework, I'd suggest you at least try and write it yourself (it really isn't hard) by following perlplexer's steps. If you still can't manage to do it, come back with code to show and explain what you've tried. Then maybe you'll get better responses.