Right, this will work with the newest perls (>= 5.6), at least if you use glob() instead of <>.   The problem is:

$ ls Hold/* |wc
/bin/ksh: /usr/bin/ls: arg list too long
       0       0       0
$ ls Hold |wc
  169170  169170 2739945
$ perl -lwe'@x=<"Hold/*">;print 0+@x'
0
$ perl -lwe'@x=glob"Hold/*";print 0+@x'
169170
$
[download]

Since 5.6 glob does not use a shell to expand filesystem wildcards.

update:   Gah! tye, of course, is right <Hold/*> is the same as glob"Hold/*".   (No '"'s inside <>.)

  p