I suspected your \b was un-necessary and the following test file implies that it does... 
use strict;

my $line = 'hi there my name is bob';

sub m1 {
    my $line = shift;
    my $re = '(\w+)' ;

    my @match = ( $line =~ /$re/g ) ;

    return scalar @match ;
}

sub m2 {
    my $line = shift;
    my $re = '\b\w+\b' ;

    my $wordcount;
    $wordcount++ while $line =~ /$re/g ;

    return $wordcount ;
}

sub m3 {
    my $line = shift;
    my $re = '\w+' ;

    my $wordcount;
    $wordcount++ while $line =~ /$re/g ;

    return $wordcount ;
}

print m1($line);
print m2($line);
print m3($line);

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Carter's compass: I know I'm on the right track when by deleting something, I'm adding functionality

In reply to Re^2: How do I just count any words from a file? by princepawn
in thread How do I just count any words from a file? by Cazbo

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