how to I count the occurrences of word 'the' in a file?

Per perlfaq4 and with the basic regex \bthe\b to indicate a word boundary as documented in perlre, we get:

my $data = do {local $/; <DATA>};

my $count = () = $data =~ m/\bthe\b/ig;

print $count;

__DATA__
Then I played with the rabbit and the thesaurus. (2)
It was quite the experience. (1)
Seriously, the bunny was the coolest pet in the whole zoo. (3)
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- Miller