Fair enough, but I think you missed my point. I wasn't trying to write his program. I was simply trying to show him the difference between an array created by using glob and one created by using opendir & readdir.

thanks, i will try the methods suggested. one more point to add on regarding usage from shell - this perl script is called along with other scripts from a master shell script which takes backup, sent emails alerts and few other tasks.
and again - thanks Telemachos for suggesting the hardcoding - i dint think in that way at all. as i need to do this only on known set of extensions- i can hardcode and sent some parameter to pick the one i need and there by skipping interpretation by shell.