1File::Copy(3pm)        Perl Programmers Reference Guide        File::Copy(3pm)
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NAME

6       File::Copy - Copy files or filehandles
7

SYNOPSIS

9               use File::Copy;
10
11               copy("sourcefile","destinationfile") or die "Copy failed: $!";
12               copy("Copy.pm",\*STDOUT);
13               move("/dev1/sourcefile","/dev2/destinationfile");
14
15               use File::Copy "cp";
16
17               $n = FileHandle->new("/a/file","r");
18               cp($n,"x");
19

DESCRIPTION

21       The File::Copy module provides two basic functions, "copy" and "move",
22       which are useful for getting the contents of a file from one place to
23       another.
24
25       copy
26           The "copy" function takes two parameters: a file to copy from and a
27           file to copy to. Either argument may be a string, a FileHandle
28           reference or a FileHandle glob. Obviously, if the first argument is
29           a filehandle of some sort, it will be read from, and if it is a
30           file name it will be opened for reading. Likewise, the second
31           argument will be written to. If the second argument does not exist
32           but the parent directory does exist, then it will be created.
33           Trying to copy a file into a non-existent directory is an error.
34           Trying to copy a file on top of itself is also an error.  "copy"
35           will not overwrite read-only files.
36
37           If the destination (second argument) already exists and is a
38           directory, and the source (first argument) is not a filehandle,
39           then the source file will be copied into the directory specified by
40           the destination, using the same base name as the source file.  It's
41           a failure to have a filehandle as the source when the destination
42           is a directory.
43
44           Note that passing in files as handles instead of names may lead to
45           loss of information on some operating systems; it is recommended
46           that you use file names whenever possible.  Files are opened in
47           binary mode where applicable.  To get a consistent behaviour when
48           copying from a filehandle to a file, use "binmode" on the
49           filehandle.
50
51           An optional third parameter can be used to specify the buffer size
52           used for copying. This is the number of bytes from the first file,
53           that will be held in memory at any given time, before being written
54           to the second file. The default buffer size depends upon the file,
55           but will generally be the whole file (up to 2MB), or 1k for
56           filehandles that do not reference files (eg. sockets).
57
58           You may use the syntax "use File::Copy "cp"" to get at the "cp"
59           alias for this function. The syntax is exactly the same.  The
60           behavior is nearly the same as well: as of version 2.15, "cp" will
61           preserve the source file's permission bits like the shell utility
62           cp(1) would do, while "copy" uses the default permissions for the
63           target file (which may depend on the process' "umask", file
64           ownership, inherited ACLs, etc.).  If an error occurs in setting
65           permissions, "cp" will return 0, regardless of whether the file was
66           successfully copied.
67
68       move
69           The "move" function also takes two parameters: the current name and
70           the intended name of the file to be moved.  If the destination
71           already exists and is a directory, and the source is not a
72           directory, then the source file will be renamed into the directory
73           specified by the destination.
74
75           If possible, move() will simply rename the file.  Otherwise, it
76           copies the file to the new location and deletes the original.  If
77           an error occurs during this copy-and-delete process, you may be
78           left with a (possibly partial) copy of the file under the
79           destination name.
80
81           You may use the "mv" alias for this function in the same way that
82           you may use the "cp" alias for "copy".
83
84       syscopy
85           File::Copy also provides the "syscopy" routine, which copies the
86           file specified in the first parameter to the file specified in the
87           second parameter, preserving OS-specific attributes and file
88           structure.  For Unix systems, this is equivalent to the simple
89           "copy" routine, which doesn't preserve OS-specific attributes.  For
90           VMS systems, this calls the "rmscopy" routine (see below).  For
91           OS/2 systems, this calls the "syscopy" XSUB directly. For Win32
92           systems, this calls "Win32::CopyFile".
93
94           Special behaviour if "syscopy" is defined (OS/2, VMS and Win32):
95
96           If both arguments to "copy" are not file handles, then "copy" will
97           perform a "system copy" of the input file to a new output file, in
98           order to preserve file attributes, indexed file structure, etc.
99           The buffer size parameter is ignored.  If either argument to "copy"
100           is a handle to an opened file, then data is copied using Perl
101           operators, and no effort is made to preserve file attributes or
102           record structure.
103
104           The system copy routine may also be called directly under VMS and
105           OS/2 as "File::Copy::syscopy" (or under VMS as
106           "File::Copy::rmscopy", which is the routine that does the actual
107           work for syscopy).
108
109       rmscopy($from,$to[,$date_flag])
110           The first and second arguments may be strings, typeglobs, typeglob
111           references, or objects inheriting from IO::Handle; they are used in
112           all cases to obtain the filespec of the input and output files,
113           respectively.  The name and type of the input file are used as
114           defaults for the output file, if necessary.
115
116           A new version of the output file is always created, which inherits
117           the structure and RMS attributes of the input file, except for
118           owner and protections (and possibly timestamps; see below).  All
119           data from the input file is copied to the output file; if either of
120           the first two parameters to "rmscopy" is a file handle, its
121           position is unchanged.  (Note that this means a file handle
122           pointing to the output file will be associated with an old version
123           of that file after "rmscopy" returns, not the newly created
124           version.)
125
126           The third parameter is an integer flag, which tells "rmscopy" how
127           to handle timestamps.  If it is < 0, none of the input file's
128           timestamps are propagated to the output file.  If it is > 0, then
129           it is interpreted as a bitmask: if bit 0 (the LSB) is set, then
130           timestamps other than the revision date are propagated; if bit 1 is
131           set, the revision date is propagated.  If the third parameter to
132           "rmscopy" is 0, then it behaves much like the DCL COPY command: if
133           the name or type of the output file was explicitly specified, then
134           no timestamps are propagated, but if they were taken implicitly
135           from the input filespec, then all timestamps other than the
136           revision date are propagated.  If this parameter is not supplied,
137           it defaults to 0.
138
139           "rmscopy" is VMS specific and cannot be exported; it must be
140           referenced by its full name, e.g.:
141
142             File::Copy::rmscopy($from, $to) or die $!;
143
144           Like "copy", "rmscopy" returns 1 on success.  If an error occurs,
145           it sets $!, deletes the output file, and returns 0.
146

RETURN

148       All functions return 1 on success, 0 on failure.  $! will be set if an
149       error was encountered.
150

NOTES

152       Before calling copy() or move() on a filehandle, the caller should
153       close or flush() the file to avoid writes being lost. Note that this is
154       the case even for move(), because it may actually copy the file,
155       depending on the OS-specific implementation, and the underlying
156       filesystem(s).
157

AUTHOR

159       File::Copy was written by Aaron Sherman <ajs@ajs.com> in 1995, and
160       updated by Charles Bailey <bailey@newman.upenn.edu> in 1996.
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164perl v5.36.0                      2022-08-30                   File::Copy(3pm)
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