my $search_string = "C04*".substr($year, 2, 2).$month.$day."*.ORD_API"; my $dir = "C:\\done\\"; my $file; my $i; opendir DIR, $dir; my @file = grep {!/^$search_string/} readdir DIR; closedir DIR; foreach $file(@file){ print $dir.$file[$i]."\n"; $i++; }