Whoa! So many great ideas so fast. You monks really are lifesavers! Here's the final working code! (I'll be sure to use strict and warnings in the future!)

print "Counting from @ARGV \n";

&countWords();
&countChar();


sub countWords() {
        open DAT, "< @ARGV[0]" or die "Can't open @ARGV : $!";
        print "Word Count\n";
        while($line = <DAT>){
        my @line_words = split(/\W/, $line);
                foreach my $word (@line_words){
                        if ($wordCount{$word}){
                                $wordCount{$word}++;
                        }else {
                                $wordCount{$word}=1;
                        }
                }
        }
        close(DAT);
        for $word (sort keys %wordCount) {
        print "$word => $wordCount{$word}\n";
        }
}

sub countChar() {
        open DAT, "< @ARGV[0]" or die "Can't open @ARGV : $!";
        print "Character count\n";
        while ($line = <DAT>){
        my @line_words = split (//, $line);
                foreach my $char (@line_words){
                        if ($charCount{$char}){
                                $charCount{$char}++;
                        }else {
                                $charCount{$char}=1;
                        }
                }
        }
        for $char (sort keys %charCount) {
                next unless $char =~ /[a-zA-Z]/;
        print "$char => $charCount{$char}\n";
        }
        close(DAT);
}
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<3<3 AJ