Path::Class offers a way. The module is portable across different file systems though the example is *nix. The main advantage to using this approach is it grows nicely and lets you pass things around easily. 

moo@cow~>mkdir temp
moo@cow~>perl -MPath::Class -le 'print Path::Class::Dir->new("./temp")
+->children == 0 ? "none" : "some"'
none
moo@cow~>touch temp/fish
moo@cow~>perl -MPath::Class -le 'print Path::Class::Dir->new("./temp")
+->children == 0 ? "none" : "some"'
some

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In reply to Re: Quickly checking if a directory is empty by Your Mother
in thread Quickly checking if a directory is empty by Anonymous Monk

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