Recursive directory traversal in perl - perl

Question

I intend to recursively traverse a directory containing this piece of perl script.
The idea is to traverse all directories whose parent directory contains the perl script and list all files path into a single array variable. Then return the list.
Here comes the error msg:
readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle $DIR at xxx
closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle $DIR at xxx
Code is attached for reference, Thank you in advance.
use strict;
use warnings;
use Cwd;
our #childfile = ();
sub recursive_dir{
my $current_dir = $_[0]; # a parameter
opendir(my $DIR,$current_dir) or die "Fail to open current directory,error: $!";
while(my $contents = readdir($DIR)){
next if ($contents =~ m/^\./); # filter out "." and ".."
#if-else clause separate dirs from files
if(-d "$contents"){
#print getcwd;
#print $contents;
#closedir($DIR);
recursive_dir(getcwd."/$contents");
print getcwd."/$contents";
}
else{
if($contents =~ /(?<!\.pl)$/){
push(#childfile,$contents);
}
}
}
closedir($DIR);
#print #childfile;
return #childfile;
}
recursive_dir(getcwd);

Answer 1

Please tell us if this is homework? You are welcome to ask for help with assignments, but it changes the sort of answer you should be given.
You are relying on getcwd to give you the current directory that you are processing, yet you never change the current working directory so your program will loop endlessly and eventually run out of memory. You should simply use $current_dir instead.
I don't believe that those error messages can be produced by the program you show. Your code checks whether opendir has succeeded and the program dies unless $DIR is valid, so the subsequent readdir and closedir must be using a valid handle.
Some other points:
Comments like # a parameter are ridiculous and only serve to clutter your code
Upper-case letters are generally reserved for global identifiers like package names. And $dir is a poor name for a directory handle, as it could also mean the directory name or the directory path. Use $dir_handle or $dh
It is crazy to use a negative look-behind just to check that a file name doesn't end with .pl. Just use push #childfile, $contents unless $contents =~ /\.pl$/
You never use the return value from your subroutine, so it is wasteful of memory to return what could be an enormous array from every call. #childfile is accessible throughout the program so you can just access it directly from anywhere
Don't put scalar variables inside double quotes. It simply forces the value to a string, which is probably unnecessary and may cause arcane bugs. Use just -d $contents
You probably want to ignore symbolic links, as otherwise you could be looping endlessly. You should change else { ... } to elsif (-f $contents) { ... }