Neglecting for a moment that the devil is in the details: 
sub word_count {
  my %h;
  $h{$_}++ for pop =~ /\w+/g;
  %h;
}

## Example ##

use Data::Dumper;
my $s = 'fee fi fo fo fi fee fo fum fum bar baz';
my %h = word_count($s);
print Dumper \%h;

[download]
You may want to replace the regex with something like /[a-z]+(?:'[a-z]+)?/gi, in order to properly count conjunctive words. 
   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print

In reply to Re: What's the best way to do a pattern search like this? by MeowChow
in thread What's the best way to do a pattern search like this? by supernewbie

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