A simple example of this kind of program is:

#!/usr/bin/perl 
use warnings;
use strict;

print "Enter a search pattern.\n";
my $info=<STDIN>;
chomp($info);
if ( $info =~ m/\w+/ ) {
    system("dir $info");
}
else {
    print "You didn\'t enter text.\n";
}
[download]

And an example run is:

C:\Info>perl search.pl
Enter a search pattern.
why*
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is ACCF-791E

 Directory of C:\Info

02/25/2008  07:40 PM               175 whydont.pl
               1 File(s)            175 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  51,114,610,688 bytes free
[download]