I think I must have confused you here. your line:

push @paths, <$argv/*> unless @ARGV;
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isn't doing what you want it to do. Change that line to just  push @paths, $argv; There's no reason to do any globbing there. Read up on push to see what it's doing.

what you should do to assign the default path if none is specified is <code> push @paths, "." unless @paths; <code> That should replace your section where you check to see if the count == 0. This code will push "." onto @paths if there's nothing in @paths.

Hope this helps..
Rich