Something else worth noting is that in the event of counting the amount of single characters tr() can be used. 
my $str = "here are some words";
my $count = $str =~ tr/e/e/;
print "We sure do have a lot of e characters: $count\n";

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In reply to Re: Perl Idioms Explained - my $count = () = /.../g by zshzn
in thread Perl Idioms Explained - my $count = () = /.../g by japhy

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