you could use:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $somedir = "/home/me/lala";
my $file;

opendir (DIR, $somedir);
  while ($file = readdir DIR) { 
    print "$file\n";
if ($file =~ /^example\.\d+\.txt$/) {
       print "  -- FOUND example: $file\n";
     }
   }
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I'm not whether my code is any faster or more optimal than yours; I'll leave that for monks greater than I =) BTW, I'm not sure if it's a typo but:

open (DIR, $somedir);
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should be:

opendir (DIR, $somedir);
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