An alternative way is to use split, which has an (IMO) not often used feature - it can return both what was matched, and what was between: 
my $line = 'This line 1 has a hit here and a hit there.';
my $word = 'hit';
my $count = 0;

my $n = 0;
my @stuff = split m/($word)/, $line;
grep { $n++; if ($n % 2) { print $_; } else { print RED, $_, RESET; $c
+ount++; } } @stuff;
print "\nFound $count times.\n";

[download]
I found, that this scales better, then running m// or s/// trough while loop, on big strings. Also handy if You need to return modified string (split + join), instead of printing it's parts.

In reply to Re: Highlighting Regex Hits by Natanael
in thread Highlighting Regex Hits by rlrandallx

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