Hi, I can't seem to figure out a way to open filenames with the '*' character in it.

As a very immediate way to figure that out, I would suggest reading the open man page. It will tell you how magic 2-arg open is and how 3-arg open is just what you want.

open FHANDLE, '<', $file # handle anything your OS can
    or die "can't open $file: $!";
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