Your problem is that tr/// is not a regex operator in the true sense. It always operates character by character.

What you have actually asked perl to do with the line

my $count = ($str =~ tr/(the)//);

• Inspect the variable $str,
• Look for any of the characters '(', 't', 'h', 'e',')', and if it finds them, as the replacement list is empty, just count them.
• return a count of the number of characters found in $str that were in the searchlist.

One way to count the occurances of a given word in a string would be to use the m// operator with the /g option and force a list context as in

my $str = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
my $count =  () = $str =~ m/(the)/ig;
print $count;
[download]

will print 2.

However, that is still not quite right as using it on the string 'There are three theatres in the town' and it will print 3! This is because the regex /(the)/ will also match the first 3 chars of 'There' and 'theatre'. To ensure that you will only match whole words you can bracket the work with \b - 'word boundary zero-width assertions' like this

my $str = "There are three theatres in the town";
my $count =  () = $str =~ m/(\bthe\b)/ig;
print $count;
[download]

which will correctly print 1.

my $str = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
my $count =  () = $str =~ m/(\bthe\b)/ig;
print $count;
[download]

which will correctly print 2. (Note: the /i modifier to make the match case independant.)

---

Okay you lot, get your wings on the left, halos on the right. It's one size fits all, and "No!", you can't have a different color.
Pick up your cloud down the end and "Yes" if you get allocated a grey one they are a bit damp under foot, but someone has to get them.
Get used to the wings fast cos its an 8 hour day...unless the Govenor calls for a cyclone or hurricane, in which case 16 hour shifts are mandatory.
Just be grateful that you arrived just as the tornado season finished. Them buggers are real work.

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