solved

Um, wow :)

$ md tempor

$ cd tempor

$ ls -loanh "<p"
ls: <p: Invalid argument

$ dir /b "<p"
File Not Found

$ echo > last_name_p

$ ls -loanh "<p"
ls: <p: Invalid argument

$ dir /b "<p"
last_name_p

$ perl -le " print -s shift" last_name_p
13

$ perl -le " print -s shift" "<p"
13
[download]

Now "dir" will accept "*p" but perl stat won't, but perl stat does wildcard with "<p"

weird :)

update: appears to be a case of win32 doing what win32 does, same as true from (-e "") on Windoze Win32::GetFullPathName() returns ...\tempor\<p and MS CRT stat expands it into last_name_p