#!/usr/bin/env perl
use warnings;
use strict;

my $inp_row = "per|l|mo|nks|ro|ck|s";
my $de = '|';
my @chars = split //, $inp_row;
my $cnt = 0;
for (@chars) { $cnt++ if ($_ eq $de) }
print "delim is $de count is $cnt\n";