Use the directory functions: opendir, closedir and readdir.
opendir DIR, $dir or die "cannot open dir $dir: $!";
my @file= readdir DIR;
closedir DIR;
This will neatly put the list of file names in the @file array (with no \n at the end of each file name).
There is a couple of other things you can improve in your code BTW:
- use Perl style loops over arrays:
foreach my $file (@file) { print "$file\n"; }
this is much simpler than using C-style for( $i=0;...) loops, you
don't have to use $i and $total any more (BTW $#filenames would give you the last index in the @filenames array,
you don't have to use $total)
- do not use chop but chomp instead, it's safer as it
will not remove the last character of a string if it is not a newline.
Finally I have no idea why $filename$i =~ s/\*//g; is there? Is there a chance you
that you might find a '*' in filenames?