While I understand playing on one's strenghts, I think you're using the wrong tool for the job. Perl is quite good at playing with text, so I don't fully understand your insistence upon using shell expansions. Apart from lack of knowledge of better tools, maybe :)

I'd suggest you to take a look to File::Find::Rule. Your problem can be solved quite easily:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find::Rule;

my $pattern = qr/
   \A gcc    # start with "gcc"
   -         # first separating hyphen
   [^-]+     # first sequence of non-hyphen
   -         # second - also last - separating hyphen
   [^-]+     # second sequence of non-hypen
   \.rpm \z  # end with ".rpm"
/mxs;
my @files = File::Find::Rule->file()->name($pattern)->maxdepth(1)->in(
+'.');

print "files: [@files]\n";
[download]

No shell expansion quoting headaches, no process spawning, comments in your pattern... and it even works!

poletti@PolettiX:~/sviluppo/perl/testdir$ ls
findit.pl
gcc-32bit-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-32bit-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-ada-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-c++-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-fortran-32bit-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-fortran-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-gij-32bit-4.1.3_20070724-25.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-gij-4.1.3_20070724-25.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-java-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-locale-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-objc-32bit-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-obj-c++-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-objc-4.1.3_20070724-15.x86_64.rpm
gcc41-testresults-4.1.3_20070724-25.x86_64.rpm
gcc-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-32bit-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-ada-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-c++-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-fortran-32bit-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-fortran-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-gij-32bit-4.2.1_20070724-26.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-gij-4.2.1_20070724-26.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-info-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-java-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-locale-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-objc-32bit-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-obj-c++-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-objc-4.2.1_20070724-17.x86_64.rpm
gcc42-testresults-4.2.1_20070724-26.x86_64.rpm
gcc-ada-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-c++-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-fortran-32bit-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-fortran-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-gij-32bit-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-gij-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-info-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-java-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-locale-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-objc-32bit-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-obj-c++-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
gcc-objc-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm
poletti@PolettiX:~/sviluppo/perl/testdir$ perl findit.pl
files: [gcc-4.2-24.x86_64.rpm]
[download]

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