my $count;

$count += tr/FIL/FIL/ while <DATA>;

print "F, I, and L occurred $count times.\n";

__DATA__
FDIELSIGCOXLSAGICK\n
[download]

Update:

This approach will give you a combined total count for all the items you're counting. If you want an individual count for each thing you're counting, with the ability to easily add or subtract items from the count list, see my followup post. Therein you will find two examples that both work well. The first (which I prefer) uses tr///, and the second uses index. I think you'll find those solutions to be much closer to what you need.

Hope this helps!

Dave

"If I had my life to do over again, I'd be a plumber." -- Albert Einstein

would that give me the occurance of them individually? Or when they are together? I also have to remove the first line in the file because it's header information and I don't need it. I have this so far but its doesn't seem to work.



while(<FILE>){
(s!>.*(\n)!!);
my @words = (A, C, G, T); #letters to search
my @file = split (/\w/g, <FILE>); #split each letter into an array

        foreach $file (@file){
                foreach $words (@words){
                        if ($file eq $words){
                                $word_list{words}++;
                        }
                }
        }
@pairs = sort {$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}
        map {[ $_ => $word_list{$_}]}
                keys %word_list;

        print "word $_ ->[0] = $_->[1]\n" for @pairs;
[download]

It's been a while since I've used perl, so i'm very very rusty. Thanks

If you want to count the occurrence of each item independantly, and you want to strip the first line off as a header line, and you want the list of items that you're counting to be easily adjustable, this will do the trick.

my $header_line = <DATA>;

my %count;

my @chars = ( qw/F G S/ );

while (my $line = <DATA> ) {
    eval "\$count{$_} += \$line =~ tr/$_/$_/,1" 
    or die $@ foreach @chars;
}

print "There are $count{$_} occurrences of $_\n"
foreach sort keys %count;

__DATA__
Sample header hine
FDIELSIGCOXLSAGICK\n
FDIELSIGCOXLSAGICK\n
[download]

The reason that the tr/// must appear inside of an eval block is that variables are not interpolated in tr/// (the transliteration table is built at compiletime, not runtime). Eval forces a fresh compilation of tr/// each time through the loop.

The reason that I pass references is because I want the variables to exist as variables inside the eval, not as values (except in the case of what's inside the tr/// itself).

And the '1' appears at the end of the eval expression so that eval returns safely (without croaking) even if no matches are found.

I think this is an elegant solution, and saves a lot of intricate fiddling.

If you want to see a solution that uses index instead of tr///, you may...

Read more... (1223 Bytes)

Dave

"If I had my life to do over again, I'd be a plumber." -- Albert Einstein

Yet another version, trying for speed like davido's using   tr   , but without losing the speed to eval's just to force   tr   to accept the variables.   If this still doesn't go fast enough you'll have to unroll into 4 separate m/// statements.

    my  $temp = <DATA>;
    print "Discarding the file header line.\n";
    print "    ", $temp;
    
    my  @chars = qw( A C G T );
    my  %cnts;
    while( <DATA> ) {
        foreach my $char (@chars) {
#           my  $cnt = () = m/$char/g;
#           $cnts{$char} += $cnt;
#           printf "  For char '%s' I found %d\n", $char, $cnt;
            $cnts{$char} += () = m/$char/g;
        }
    }
    foreach my $char (@chars) {
        printf "  Char '%s':  %6d\n", $char, $cnts{$char};
    }

__DATA__
Generated by a completely confused program yesterday
ACGTGACTAGAGGCCCGGGGAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCC
ACCTGACTAGAGGCCCGGGGAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCC
ACGTGACTAGAGGCCCGGGGAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCC
AGGTGAGTAGAGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGG
ACGTGACTAGAGGCCCGGGGAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCC
[download]

Outputs

Discarding the file header line.
    Generated by a completely confused program yesterday
  Char 'A':      70
  Char 'C':      49
  Char 'G':      56
  Char 'T':      10

Hi there!

Just a few mistakes:



<FILE>; # ignore first line
my @words = (A, C, G, T); #letters to search
my @file = do {local $/; split (//, <FILE>); }; #split each letter int
+o an array

foreach $file (@file){
    foreach $words (@words){
        if ($file eq $words){
             $word_list{$file}++;
        }
    }
}
@pairs = sort {$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}
         map {[ $_ => $word_list{$_}]}
         keys %word_list;

print "word $_->[0] = $_->[1]\n" for @pairs;
[download]



You were only splitting on the first line of the file, and there was a typo on the last line. The code above will hopefully work as you intended.