Anonymous Monk,
I think what you are asking is:

How do I get a list of words, defined by white space, in a file and the number of times they appear. I realize that words like "book keeper" which can be spelled with or without a space, different case, and words that wrap lines are going to be an issue, but I want a 99% solution.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $file = $ARGV[0] || 'foo.txt';
open (INPUT, '<', $file) or die "Unable to open $file for reading : $!
+";

my %word;
while ( <INPUT> ) {
    chomp;
    $word{$_}++ for split " ";
}
print "$_ : $word{$_}\n" for sort { $word{$b} <=> $word{$a} } keys %wo
+rd;
[download]

It isn't perfect (99% solution), and the sort routine is not the most efficient, but you get the idea.