Two things - first, it'd be handy to have your sample input as well. Second, what you probably want to do is continue using split, but then just clear off all trailing punctuation: 

  foreach my $wd (@words) {
    $wd =~ s/[[:punct:]]+$//;
    next if length($wd) < 5;
    $count{$wd}++;
  }

[download]
This will remove trailing apostrophes, such as "wha' zup?", but not ones in the middle of words, such as "ain't".

Oh, I lied - three things. Use strict and warnings. Just do. I added a "my" to the foreach above for strictness purposes - do the same for your other foreach.

Once you have all this, you should be able to sort on value, foreach my $w (sort { $count{$a} <=> $count{$b} } keys %count) { ... } to get everything in order. What you do with it after that depends on how you want to deal with multiple words in 5th place.

PS: best use of split with no parameters I've ever seen. I don't think that's even close to your problem, but is, in fact, the best part of your code. Good job. :-)

In reply to Re: Top five words by occurrence by Tanktalus
in thread Top five words by occurrence by ghettofinger

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