opendir D, "somedir" or die;
my $count = () = readdir D;
$count -= 2; # :-)
closedir D;
[download]

Although you might benchmark that against this for both small and huge directories:

opendir D, "somedir" or die;
my $count = -2;
$count++ while readdir D;
closedir D;
[download]

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
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