heh, you're right in that i want /^somefile/ not somefile*. Is glob the fastest way to find files in a directory? The opendir, grep ... readdir did I take from "perldoc -f readdir" and it seemed like a nice sollution, but I'm skipping it for glob. What I was trying to figure out in the first place was "what's the cheapest way of listing a bunch of files in a directory" and it seems to me like glob is the way to go. Thanks everyone for all the answers