How about using opendir() and readdir()?

my $dir = '/tmp/foo';
if ( my @contents = dir_contents( $dir ) {
  do_something_about_it( $dir, @contents );
}
else {
  it_is_empty( $dir )
}

sub dir_contents {
  my $dir = shift;
  opendir DIR, $dir or die "Couldn't open $dir: $!";
  return grep !/^\.\.?$/, readdir DIR;
}
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