here is my revised code and it's working like a charm I the file contains only numbers (integers and decimals), no zeros, thank you all for your input 

my $INPUT_FILE;
my $OUTPUT_FILE;
my %count;
open ($INPUT_FILE, "< " ) or die "Can't open file";
open ($OUTPUT_FILE, ">output") or die "can't open output file";


while($number = readline($INPUT_FILE)){
$count{$number}++;
}

foreach $number(sort keys %count){
  print "$number occurs $count{$number} times(s)\n";
}

close ($OUTPUT_FILE) or die "Can't close file!!!";

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In reply to Re^2: counting elements using a hash by bk1388
in thread counting elements using a hash by bk1388

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