in reply to Re^8: reading file names to an array from the directory tree
in thread reading file names to an array from the directory tree

It makes no sense to include "." and ".." — they would be redundant or outside the selected branch — so they are never included except "." if it was the provided path.
>perl -MFile::Find::Rule -E"say for File::Find::Rule->in('.')" . a b bar bar/bar foo foo/foo >perl -MFile::Find::Rule -E"say for File::Find::Rule->file->in('.')" a b bar/bar foo/foo