count of words (fields) after "split"

Hi,
I'm a very newbie with perl. I have a text file and want to read it line
by line and split it into words:
my @fields = split / /, $_;
- so far no problem.
Now I have to count the words in the line. This I could not achieve.
I#m sure it is very simple - but I did not find the suitable command
-- 
Richard Müller - Am Spring 9 - D-58802 Balve
r.mueller@oeko-sorpe.de - www.oeko-sorpe.de

• count of words (fields) after "split" by Richard Müller
• RE: count of words (fields) after "split" by Wagner, David --- Senior Programmer Analyst --- WGO
• Re: count of words (fields) after "split" by John W. Krahn
• Re: count of words (fields) after "split" by WC -Sx- Jones
• Re: count of words (fields) after "split" by Beau E. Cox