You could use File::Find to solve your problem. But, if you have no need to find files recursively throughout a directory tree (and you have not given any indication that you need to), then I would recommend using opendir and readdir instead.

This approach still does not use a single regex to match the filenames, but it is worth considering. This code is UNTESTED:

use File::Basename;

# Get all files in the directory which look like t*.class
opendir my $DIR, $dirname or die "can not open $dirname: $!";
my @files =
   grep { -f "$dirname/$_" }   # choose only plain files
   grep { /t.*\.class$/    }   # pattern match
readdir  $DIR;
closedir $DIR;

# Now select only those files whose name has exactly one $
# between the "t" and ".class"
my @files2;
for my $file (@files) {
   my $base = basename($file);
   $base =~ s/\$//;
   push @files2, $file if $base eq 'testfile.class';
}
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