I'm not sure at first glance how to fix your version, but tr/// counts the characters it replaces and returns that number. 

my @strings = qw( aaabbbb ab abb aabb aaabb aabbb );

for my $string ( @strings )
{
    my $a_counter = $string =~ tr/a/a/;
    my $b_counter = $string =~ tr/b/b/;
    print "In $string there were $a_counter 'a's and $b_counter 'b's. 
+\n";
}

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In reply to Re: Extracting the number of repetitions from a regex by mr_mischief
in thread Extracting the number of repetitions from a regex by pat_mc

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