That fails when input has leading or trailing blanks:

$ perl -lpe '($_=()=/\s+/g)++'   ## leading
 foo bar
3
$ perl -lpe '($_=()=/\s+/g)++'   ## trailing
foo bar 
3
$ perl -lpe '($_=()=/\s+/g)++'   ## both
 foo bar 
4
$ _

[download]

It's better to count ocurrences of actual elements (\S+):

$ perl -wle 'print scalar (()=/\S+/g) for "a b c", " a b c", "a b c ",
+ " a b c "'
3
3
3
3
$ _

[download]

Anyway I prefer split too, like salva++'s 0e0 solution.

--
David Serrano

In reply to Re^3: Counting the number of items returned by split without using a named array by Hue-Bond
in thread Counting the number of items returned by split without using a named array by Anonymous Monk

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