If you want to read a directory, you use the functions opendir, readdir, and closedir. You can get a decent idea of what they do by looking at POSIX documentation. They have been modified to fit Perl better, so you still have to look at the Perl documentation as well.

If you want to fork a process, you use the function "fork". If you want to call exec, Perl has it. You can even have the parent process wait on the child's pid.

This isn't a big deal to everyone, but I like POSIX, and I like knowing that if I want to do something new, there's a good chance I can start with "how would I do it in C on a POSIX system?" I have many complaints about Java, and one is that their original standard library appears to have been modeled on early versions of MFC, even though Sun had access to a superior API, since they had plenty of experience with shipping a POSIX operating system.