in reply to and this or that

Your precedence problem goes away with a little untangling. Move the error handling for opendir() in closer to the call, rather than out past the readdir(). Here's I'd code it. 
for my $next (@ARGV){
  opendir(PWD, "$next") or die "$next: $!";
  my @files = readdir(PWD) or die "$next: $!";
  closedir(PWD);

  print join("\n", @files), "\n";
}

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(Updated to add error handling after readdir(), too.)

Or, if you really want to use precedence, and if you want to ignore non-directories in @ARGV, consider 

for my $next (@ARGV) {
    opendir(PWD, "$next") and do {
        my @files = readdir(PWD) or die "$next: $!";
        closedir(PWD);
        print join("\n", @files), "\n";
    }
}

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Re: Re: and this or that
by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Feb 06, 2001 at 01:01 UTC 
    for my $next (@ARGV) {    
   opendir(PWD, "$next") and do {
      my @files = readdir(PWD) or die "$next: $!";
      closedir(PWD);
      print join("\n", @files), "\n";    
   }
}

    [download]
     TIMTOWDI. I personally find this a little clearer, and is no less idiomatic: 
    foreach my $next (@ARGV) {    
   if (opendir(PWD, "$next")) {
      my @files = readdir(PWD) or die "$next: $!";
      closedir(PWD);
      print join("\n", @files), "\n";    
   }
}

    [download]
    While using and and do like that is only slightly less clear than using a true 'if' block, it is slightly less clear than using a true 'if' block. :)
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