Histogram generation
Python - 83 characters
Seems that we can take input from anywhere, so this takes input during execution, rather than from the command line, and uses Ejrb's suggestion to shorten it by 8.
s=map(len,raw_input().split())
c=0;exec'c+=1;print&quot;%3d|&quot;%c+&quot;#&quot;*s.count(c);'*max(s)

Python - 91 characters
This will fall over with quotes.
import sys;s=map(len,sys.argv[1:])
for i in range(1,max(s)+1):print&quot;%3d|&quot;%i+'#'*s.count(i)

Input:
&gt; python hist.py Please write a specification rather than giving a single example which, solely by virtue of being a single example, cannot express the range of acceptable output styles, and which doesnt guarantee to cover all corner cases. Its good to have a few test cases, but its even more important to have a good spec.

Output:
  1|#####
  2|######
  3|#####
  4|##########
  5|######
  6|#############
  7|####
  8|#
  9|##
 10|#
 11|
 12|
 13|#