While this will work, note that xp_dirtree is undocumented.

You can achieve the same result, if you pipe the result from a simple xp_cmdshell DIR... into a table like so:

create table #temp(

[name] varchar(100))

DECLARE @sql varchar(100)

SET @sql = 'DIR C:\ /b/a-d-s'

INSERT INTO #temp EXEC master.dbo.xp_cmdshell @sql

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM #temp WHERE name LIKE 'abc%'

DROP TABLE #temp