As promised here is the finished code. Mad props and thanks to tachyon, and Zaxo for their comments and assistance.
I would post the whole progam, but all it does is convert the standard IIS Log file to fixed width format for upload to our datawarehouse. Our datastaging component wants files in this format. Don't ask me why, that was before my time at my current employer.
sub listfiles {
$path = shift;
$path = "." unless $path;
opendir( DIR, $path ) || die "Can't open $path: $!";
!/^\./ and push @loot, "$_\n" while ($_ = readdir(DIR));
closedir( DIR );
return @loot;
}