Sounds like you just need to keep a count of how many guesses the user inputs. Increment the count each time you get do my $guess=<STDIN>; and it'll reflect the number of letters the user guessed.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# hangman.pl
#
use strict;
use warnings;
my @words=qw( portion answers printer program );
my @guesses=();
my $wrong=0;
my $choice=$words[rand @words];
my $hangman="0-|--<";
my @letters=split(//, $choice);
my @hangman=split(//, $hangman);
my @blankword=(0) x scalar(@hangman);
my $num_guesses = 0;
while ($wrong < scalar(@hangman)) {
foreach my $i (0..$#letters) {
if ($blankword[$i]) {
print $blankword[$i];
} else {
print "-";
}
}
print "\n";
if ($wrong) {
print @hangman[0..$wrong-1];
}
print "\n Your Guess: ";
my $guess=<STDIN>;
chomp $guess;
my $right=0;
for (my $i=0; $i<@letters; $i++) {
if ($letters[$i] eq $guess) {
$blankword[$i]=$guess;
$right=1;
}
}
$wrong++ unless($right);
$num_guesses++;
if (join('', @blankword) eq $choice) {
print "The word is '$choice'... You got it right in $n
+um_guesses guesses!\n";
exit;
}
}
print "$hangman\nBetter luck next time, the word was '$choice'.\n";