perl -ne 'BEGIN {$col=1}' -e 's/\r?\n//; @F=split /\t/, $_; $sum += $F[$col]; 
END {warn "Sum of column $col for $. lines\n"; print "$sum\n"}' file.tab

##</code><code>##

perl -e 'BEGIN {$col=1}' -lane '$sum += $F[$col]; 
          END {print "Sum of column $col for $. line: $sum"}' file.tab

##</code><code>##

perl -lane '$sum += $F[1]; END {print $sum}' file.tab