two ways to go about it:

Perl Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)

chdir("path/to/dir") or die "$!";
opendir (DIR, ".") or die "$!";
my @files = grep {/students_.*?\.html/}  readdir DIR;
close DIR;
{
   local @ARGV = @files;
   while(<>){
      #each file will be read line by line here
   }
}

chdir("path/to/dir") or die "$!"; opendir (DIR, ".") or die "$!"; my @files = grep {/students_.*?\.html/} readdir DIR; close DIR; { local @ARGV = @files; while(<>){ #each file will be read line by line here } }

Perl Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)

opendir (DIR, "path/to/dir") or die "$!";
my @files = grep {/students_.*?\.html/}  readdir DIR;
close DIR;
foreach my $file (@files) {
   open(FH,"path/to/$file") or die "$!";
   while (<FH>){ 
     #read file line by line here
   }
   close(FH);
}

opendir (DIR, "path/to/dir") or die "$!"; my @files = grep {/students_.*?\.html/} readdir DIR; close DIR; foreach my $file (@files) { open(FH,"path/to/$file") or die "$!"; while (<FH>){ #read file line by line here } close(FH); }