use strict;

local *DIR;
opendir(DIR, '.') or die "Failed to open: $!\n";

my $file;

while (defined($file = readdir(DIR)))
{
    print "$file: ", (stat($file))[7], "\n";
}

closedir(DIR);

.: 16384
..: 8192
12810005141553.zip: 971956
12810005141553_log.txt: 228
12820005141551_log.txt: 228
200310271800.xml: 48819126
200310291515.xml: 612137
nasimage.zip: 41993313
newoutfits.zip: 412923
PDLnewitems_v2.txt: 1163863
plm_logo_82x27.gif: 1182
price.zip: 1686002
prod_summary.txt: 10587
reconcile.xls: 21956096
relation_summary.txt: 86904
rob_resume.doc: 26624
shipped_20031030.xls: 56832
uo.gif: 549
[download]

I'm running this code

use strict;

my $dir = "c:\\params";

opendir DIR, $dir or die $!;

foreach my $file (readdir(DIR)){
    unless(-d $file){
       print $file;
       my @stats = lstat ($file);
    
       print "\t\$stat = $stats[7]\n";
    }
    
}
[download]

And get this

AMRO    $stat = 
DATE CATEGORY    $stat = 
NEON    $stat = 
PARAMIN.pm    $stat = 1137
SMSL    $stat = 
SMSREPSMEMIDCTOTS10.TXT    $stat = 
SMSREPSMEMIDCTOTS11.TXT    $stat = 
SMSREPSMEMIDCTOTS12.TXT    $stat = 
SMSREPSMEMIDCTOTS13.TXT    $stat = 
SMSREPSMEMIDCTOTS14.TXT    $stat = 
tp1.pl    $stat = 247
[download]

Which has 2 errors no stats for the TXT files and NEON and SMSL are directories but . and .. are filtered out.

Anyone seem this at all

It's always good to include (a small bit of) the code you are having a problem with. Thus we can see you missed a bit in the description of readdir(). readdir() only gives you the next name out of the directory, which is thus only the filename, and not including the path to the directory. In steves example notice that he used directory '.' so there wasn't a path to worry about.

Anyway, check this modified version of your code:

use File::Spec;

my $dir = "c:\\Perl";

opendir DIR, $dir or die $!;

foreach my $file (readdir(DIR)){
    my  $path_to_file = File::Spec->catfile( $dir, $file );
    printf "  I see file '%s'    path '%s'\n", $file, $path_to_file;
    next  unless -e $path_to_file;

    unless(-d $path_to_file){
       print $path_to_file;
       my @stats = lstat ($path_to_file);
       print "\t\$stat = $stats[7]\n";
    }
   
}
[download]

Note that the full path to the file to use with -d , -e , or lstat() is the combination of the directory path plus the filename returned from readdir().

I used the File::Spec module to combine these because I'd rather let it worry about combining directory paths and filenames and getting the '/' or '\' separators correct.