One way to count the occurrence of each character in a string:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;  #never, never leave home without it

my %chars = ();
my $string = "J. J. is cool!";
foreach my $character (split //, $string) {
     $chars{$character}++;
}
print "Report:\n";
foreach my $key (keys %chars) {
     print "\t$key = $chars{$key}\n";
}
[download]

[13:22:15 jhorner@gateway scripts]$ ./20000714-1.pl 
Report:
         = 3
       ! = 1
       o = 2
       i = 1
       J = 2
       c = 1
       s = 1
       l = 1
       . = 2
[download]

J. J. Horner
Linux, Perl, Apache, Stronghold, Unix
jhorner@knoxlug.org http://www.knoxlug.org/