I incorporated elements of your script into this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Path::Extended::Dir;

my $dir = Path::Extended::Dir->new('/root/Desktop');
$dir->open;
chdir($dir);
while( my $entry = $dir->read($dir) ) { 
    next if $entry =~ /^\./ or -f $entry; 
    print $entry, "\n";
}
$dir->close;
[download]

I decided to use Path::Extended::Dir to try to get better control.