"what would be really great would be a nice generic template of a .pm (i know where to put them) that can export a single function (prototype sub myfunc (@)) that returns a @list. any help?"

h2xs produces a skeleton source tree with CPAN/MakeMaker style build magic, testsuite, and modules. Both the Cookbook and the Camel cover h2xs enough to get you started. It is heavyweight for for the kind of exercise you're talking about, but you might like it anyway.

Btw, for the filename globbing function you present in your followup, you might want to look at the diamond operator <> with glob arguments.

After Compline,
Zaxo