I am often torn when it comes to recommending Perl's glob (aka the <...> operator, when it isn't readline). On the one hand, it's built in and often shortens code, on the other, it has several caveats one should be aware of.

1. glob does not list filenames beginning with a dot by default. For someone coming from a unixish shell, this might make perfect sense, but for someone coming from, for example, a readdir implementation, this might be surprising, and so it should at least be mentioned.

2. Probably the biggest problem I see with glob is variables interpolated into the pattern. The default glob splits its argument on whitespace, which means that, for example, glob("$dir/*.log") is a problem when $dir is 'c:/program files/foo'. This can be avoided by doing use File::Glob ':bsd_glob'; (Update: except on Perls before v5.16, please see Tux's reply and below for alternatives), but that doesn't help with the next problem:

3. If a variable interpolated into the pattern contains glob metacharacters (\[]{}*?~), this will cause unexpected results for anyone not aware of this list and expecting the characters to be taken literally.

4. Lastly, File::Glob can override glob globally. If, for example, you use it in a module, and someone else overrides the default glob, then suddenly your code might not behave the way you expected.

5. <update> glob in scalar context with a variable pattern also suffers from surprising behavior, as choroba pointed out in his reply - thank you! (additional info) </update>

That's why I think advising the use of glob without mentioning the caveats is potentially problematic. Perhaps one wants to create a backup of a folder and don't want to miss any files, say for example, .htaccess? And I also often see things like glob("$dir/*") going without comment.

Personally I find readdir, in combination with some of the functions from File::Spec, to be a decent, if slightly complicated, tool (one example). One better alternative among several is children from Path::Class::Dir, or methods from one of the other modules like Path::Tiny. (Modules like File::Find::Rule often get mentioned as alternatives, except that those of course recurse into subdirectories by default.)

use Path::Class qw/dir/;
my @files = dir('foo', 'bar quz', 'baz')->children;
# @files includes .dot files, but not . and ..
# and its elements are Path::Class objects
print "<$_>\n" for @files;
[download]

Now, of course this isn't to say glob is all bad, I've certainly used and recommended it plenty of times. If one has read all of its documentation, including File::Glob, and is aware of all the caveats, and especially if one is using fixed strings for the patterns, it can be perfectly fine. But I still think it should not be blindly used or recommended.