#!/usr/bin/perl

# general use directives
use strict;
use warnings;

# project specific use directives
# this comes with the standard ActiveState
# distribution.  You can also look for
# a newer version with PPM
use Win32::OLE;

my $wd;

# get the document
# use the full path
eval 
{
  $wd = Win32::OLE->GetObject('C:/pathto/document/foo.doc') 
};

die "Unable to load document\n" if $@;

# all of the Word document data members I'm using
# are explained in the MSDN documentation of the 
# external interfaces of a Word Document.
# if you have MSDN, search for "Word OLE".

# get the number of paragraphs
my $paraCount = $wd->{Paragraphs}->Count;

# set the counter
my $foo = 0;
my @words;

while ($foo++ < $paraCount)
{
	push @words, split /\s/, $wd->{Paragraphs}{$foo}{Range}{Text};
}

#clean up at the end
undef $wd;