Further testing indicates that we are getting side tracked by the single quote issue. That is if we change the input file so it specifies a file or directory name that contains extended ascii as in an accented e (0x82) then we get the same result with the stat function. Windows accepts these name. stat does not. The name I tested with came from my Adobe Acrobat installation in C:\Program Files (x86).

Here is the modified program run against an updated input file.

use 5.12.0;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Carp;

open IN,"<DirList2.txt";
my $fn=<IN>;
chomp $fn;

my @st=stat $fn;

if (@st) {
    say "Array defined";
} else {
    say "Array undefined";
}
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The input was:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat\Sequences\FRA\Cr0xc20x82er des fichiers PDF accessibles.sequ

The output was:

Array undefined