my $directory = 'c:\midicsv\newmidi';

opendir(DIR,$directory);
my @files = readdir(DIR);
closedir(DIR);

#the following line is not truly necessary but I left it in so I could see that the file names were being captured.
foreach(@files){  print $_,"\n";}

#this is the line giving me trouble, 
foreach(@files) {system("c:\midicsv\midicsv.exe", "c:\midicsv\newmidi\$_", "c:\midicsv\newcsv\$_");}