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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In reply to Re: Re: Word Counting (contractions) by Anonymous Monk
in thread Word Counting by Anonymous Monk

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