the list has no name..the list is returned by readdir... which you can put into an array like so my @files = readdir(PRINT). However I'm trying to expand my foo and learn to ninja-code it in such a way that doesnt require a variable declaration. Probably shoulda been more clear about that in the original question. Thank you for your information though. I normally use that or just simply the array in a scalar context which will return the size as well.