Hi, by pick up I mean to say that, the code finds all of the directories and files correctly, except the ones I listed that it does not.

I dont have the join(':',stat $_) in my code.

As per your comment, I have added the code below on how I set the @files

my @files;

my $path = shift;

opendir (DIR, $path)
or die "Unable to open $path: $!";

my @files =
# Third: Prepend the full path
map { $path . '\\' . $_ }
# Second: take out '.' and '..'
grep { !/^\.{1,2}$/ }
# First: get all files
readdir (DIR);
closedir (DIR);
[download]

I am not sure exactly what you are trying to do but as has been mentioned File::Find is the right tool for this job. This is some untested code for your pleasure...

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find;

my $starting_dir = "put path to dir here";

my $count_dat_png = 0;

find(\&wanted, $starting_dir);
print "number of dat and png files: $count_dat_png\n";


sub wanted
{
    return if -d ; # skip directories
                   # . and .. are directories
                   # or just leave this out entirely
        
    if (-f and ( /\.dat$/i or /\.png$/i))
    {
        #print "$File::Find::name\n"; #full name if you want
        $count_dat_png++;
    }
}
[download]

added: I would read the example and explanation of the module File::Find carefully.

Thank you both for your feedback, greatly appreciated. I will try your suggestions.