#! perl -slw
use strict;

sub nWordsMatch {
    my( $str1, $str2 ) = @_;
    my $p = 0; 
    $p++ while substr( $str1, $p, 1 ) eq substr( $str2, $p, 1 );
    my @words = substr( $str1, 0, $p-1 ) =~ m[\b(\w+)\b\W+]g;
    return @words;
}

my @matchWords = nWordsMatch( 
    'This is a sentence', 
    'This is another sentence.' 
);
print "@matchWords";

my $count = @matchWords;
print $count;

@matchWords = nWordsMatch( 
    'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', 
    'The quick brown fox jumps over teh lazy dog', 
);
print "@matchWords";
print scalar @matchWords;


__END__
c:\Perl\test>test2
This is
2
The quick brown fox jumps over
6
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