Last word

You are given a string. Write a script to find the length of the last word in the given string.

Examples

Example 1
Input: $str = 'The Weekly Challenge'
Output: 9

Example 2
Input: $str = '   Hello   World    '
Output: 5

Example 3
Input: $str = 'Let's begin the fun'
Output: 3

Analysis

Well, this isn't too hard. We're looking for a string of letters, followed by 0 or more non-letters and the end of the string, which is easy to say in regular-expressionese.

The only slight edge case is when there are no words at all in the string.

The post is practical, well-structured and thoughtful. It balances clarity with technical depth, making it useful for readers who want both an understanding of the problem and insight into efficient approaches.

Try it 

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Blog: http://ccgi.campbellsmiths.force9.co.uk/challenge

use v5.26;    # The Weekly Challenge - 2025-07-21
use utf8;     # Week 331 - task 1 - Last word
use warnings; # Peter Campbell Smith
binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';
use Encode;

last_word('The Weekly Challenge');
last_word('   Hello   World    ');
last_word('123 4567');
last_word('');
last_word('Danger!');

sub last_word {
    
    $_[0] =~ m|([a-z]+)[^a-z]*$|i;
    
    say qq[\nInput: '$_[0]'];
    say qq[Output: ] . (defined($1) ? length($1) : 0);
}

4 lines of code

Output from script

Input: 'The Weekly Challenge'
Output: 9

Input: '   Hello   World    '
Output: 5

Input: '123 4567'
Output: 0

Input: ''
Output: 0

Input: 'Danger!'
Output: 6