Why not just count the instances of whitespace? 
my $str = "this is a test string";
my $cnt = 1;                        # num tokens = whitespace + 1

++$cnt while $str =~ /\s+/g;
print $cnt, "\n";                   # prints 5

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-- Tanalis
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In reply to Re: Counting the number of items returned by split without using a named array by Tanalis
in thread Counting the number of items returned by split without using a named array by Anonymous Monk

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