Win8 Strawberry 5.30.3.1 (64) Sat 09/26/2020 0:05:59 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl use strict; use warnings; my $kards; my $bad = 'AKQJT98765432KKKK'; my $card = 'K'; eval "\$kards = \$bad =~ tr/$card//"; print "1: Num of '$card' in $bad is == $kards \n"; my $kings = $bad =~ tr/K//; print "2: Num of '$card' in $bad is == $kings \n"; __END__ 1: Num of 'K' in AKQJT98765432KKKK is == 5 2: Num of 'K' in AKQJT98765432KKKK is == 5