Hello Monks,
Am completely new at perl programming;
I am trying to count the occurence of a string "abc" in a flat file (data.txt) of following structure and return the count and the matching lines. 

_data.txt_
abc:AB CD:100
def:DE FG:101
ghi:GH IJ:102
abc:AB CD:100
ghi:GH IJ:103

[download]

I am able to grep the matching lines for string "abc" using the below code, although i read that using grep is not advisable for huge files. 

my $file='source_data\data.txt';
open FILE, $file or die "FILE $file NOT FOUND - $!\n";

while (<FILE>){
        chop $_;
        my ($a, $b, $c) = split /:/, $_;
        my $r = [$a, $b, $c];
        my @arr = $r->[0];
       
        my @matches = grep $_ eq "abc", $arr[0];
        
        foreach my $i (@matches) {
        print $_."\n";
        }
}

[download]
_ouput_
abc:AB CD:100
abc:AB CD:100

[download]

How can I get the count of matching lines?
Seeking your kind advise.
--new@perl

In reply to find a string and count of its occurence in a text file by new@perl

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