Another solution for the hell of it. No idea how you would coax the second solution out of it. No matter how I tweak things (shotgun debugging :) it converges to the same answer. Hmm.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @arr = (0..9);
my %hash;
@hash{@arr} = (0) x @arr;

sub scanit
{
    my $number = shift;
    my $cnt = 0;
    for (0..9)
    {
        foreach my $c (split //, $hash{$_})
        {
            $cnt++ if ($number == $c);
        }
    }
    $cnt+1;
}
    
my $solcount=0;
while (1)
{
    my $cond = 0;
    # update the counts
    for (my $i=9; $i>=0; $i--)
    {
        my $cnt = scanit($i);
        $hash{$i} = $cnt;
    }

    # check whether our solution is valid.
    for (0..9)
    {
        my $cnt = scanit($_);
        $cond = 1 if ($hash{$_} != $cnt);
    }

    # print it if it is.
    if ($cond == 0)
    {
        my @print;
        for (1..9)
        {
            push @print, "of $_ "."s is $hash{$_}";
        }
        print "The number of 0s in this sentence is $hash{0}, " .
            join(", ", @print) . "\n";
        die;
    }
    else
    {
        $cond = 1;
    }
}

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--
Ash OS durbatulk, ash OS gimbatul,
Ash OS thrakatulk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!
Uzg-Microsoft-ishi amal fauthut burguuli.

In reply to Re: (OT) Hofstadter Metapuzzle by hagus
in thread (OT) Hofstadter Metapuzzle by MeowChow

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