Get a list of the names of the files in the directory with opendir and readdir (or use glob), and then put the filename in a variable. Skeleton code:

my $directory = "/path/to/files";
opendir DIR, $directory or die "can't open $directory: $!\n";

while (my $file = readdir DIR) {
    next unless -f "$directory/$file";
    open FILE, "$directory/$file" or warn "Can't open $file: $!\n", ne
+xt;
    # do stuff to FILE
    close FILE;
}
closedir DIR;
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perl -e 'print "How sweet does a rose smell? "; chomp $n = <STDIN>; $r
+ose = "smells sweet to degree $n"; *other_name = *rose; print "$other
+_name\n"'
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opendir(DIR,"."); 
@Files = readdir(DIR); 
closedir(DIR);
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appendum... You might want to do this

@Files = grep /\w/, readdir(DIR);
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to avoid reading . and .. into the array.

cLive ;-)

Update:d'oh - thanks Randal.

Appendum to appendum... "assuming your file names containword chars".

But that'll miss the perfectly legitimate file named "!!!". Why are you ruling all of those out?

The most straightforward is:

@files = grep { $_ ne "." and $_ ne ".." } readdir DIR;
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-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker