Exactly! Reading a file or directory alters the system by incrementing pointers: it's best to read only once, but if you read more than once, at least limit your reads to once place. This sort of thing is exactly why I started reading like this:

my $path = "/path/to/whatever";
opendir (DIR, $path) or die "Can't read $path: $!";
my @files = grep { not /^\.{1,2}$/ } readdir (DIR);
closedir (DIR);

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