1. Define a variable holding the regex you want to use.
   • my $dot = qr/^[^\.{1,2}]/;
   • This checks to see if the string begins with a period or two (.) or (..)
2. Check out http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/our.html
for more info... about 'our' and 'my' for defining variables. In your example - my will work fine.
3. Use your defined variables in the grep, shown below.

my @list = qw(. .. test.xls file100.pl);

my $dot = qr/^[^\.{1,2}]/;

my @files = grep { /$dot/ } @list;

foreach my $file(@files) {
        print "$item\n";
}
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