Since you reference dir I assume that you're running windows. If that is true then the answers are NO and YES. This isn't a Perl problem, it's a brain dead windows shell problem.

For example on Windows XP,

  perl -e "print join(',', @ARGV)" *.*
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Yields:

*.*
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On Linux, the sample command produces:

argo.user.properties,.....more files....,tmp
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To do what you want to do, glob will probably help.

perl -e "print join(',', glob(shift))" *
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On windows this then produces:

argo.users.properties,.....more files......,tmp
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Hope that helps