readdir will get "all the things" in a directory, and Path::Class tries to be somewhat platform independent, and filters . and .. out for you. Also consider File::Find, if you want stuff beyond one directory.

Path::Class is fairly nice, but doesn't respect Windows well - at least its ->slurp() method does not understand to use binmode, so you can only read in files that you know are text files where the line endings are not critical.