I dodidn't think my @list = `dir`; does what you think it does. Backticks will put the entire listing into a single string, $list[0]. File::Rename's overridden rename will fail since the listing will never match a file name (even with only one file - newline tacked on).

Here, too, glob would be preferable for populating @list.

Update: Oops. Major thinko. I'll stand by preferring glob to shelling out.