File::Copy - phpMan

NAME
    File::Copy - Copy files or filehandles

SYNOPSIS
            use File::Copy;

            copy("sourcefile","destinationfile") or die "Copy failed: $!";
            copy("Copy.pm",\*STDOUT);
            move("/dev1/sourcefile","/dev2/destinationfile");

            use File::Copy "cp";

            $n = FileHandle->new("/a/file","r");
            cp($n,"x");

DESCRIPTION
    The File::Copy module provides two basic functions, "copy" and "move",
    which are useful for getting the contents of a file from one place to
    another.

    copy
        The "copy" function takes two parameters: a file to copy from and a
        file to copy to. Either argument may be a string, a FileHandle
        reference or a FileHandle glob. Obviously, if the first argument is
        a filehandle of some sort, it will be read from, and if it is a file
        *name* it will be opened for reading. Likewise, the second argument
        will be written to. If the second argument does not exist but the
        parent directory does exist, then it will be created. Trying to copy
        a file into a non-existent directory is an error. Trying to copy a
        file on top of itself is also an error. "copy" will not overwrite
        read-only files.

        If the destination (second argument) already exists and is a
        directory, and the source (first argument) is not a filehandle, then
        the source file will be copied into the directory specified by the
        destination, using the same base name as the source file. It's a
        failure to have a filehandle as the source when the destination is a
        directory.

        Note that passing in files as handles instead of names may lead to
        loss of information on some operating systems; it is recommended
        that you use file names whenever possible. Files are opened in
        binary mode where applicable. To get a consistent behaviour when
        copying from a filehandle to a file, use "binmode" on the
        filehandle.

        An optional third parameter can be used to specify the buffer size
        used for copying. This is the number of bytes from the first file,
        that will be held in memory at any given time, before being written
        to the second file. The default buffer size depends upon the file,
        but will generally be the whole file (up to 2MB), or 1k for
        filehandles that do not reference files (eg. sockets).

        You may use the syntax "use File::Copy "cp"" to get at the "cp"
        alias for this function. The syntax is *exactly* the same. The
        behavior is nearly the same as well: as of version 2.15, "cp" will
        preserve the source file's permission bits like the shell utility
        cp(1) would do, while "copy" uses the default permissions for the
        target file (which may depend on the process' "umask", file
        ownership, inherited ACLs, etc.). If an error occurs in setting
        permissions, "cp" will return 0, regardless of whether the file was
        successfully copied.

    move
        The "move" function also takes two parameters: the current name and
        the intended name of the file to be moved. If the destination
        already exists and is a directory, and the source is not a
        directory, then the source file will be renamed into the directory
        specified by the destination.

        If possible, move() will simply rename the file. Otherwise, it
        copies the file to the new location and deletes the original. If an
        error occurs during this copy-and-delete process, you may be left
        with a (possibly partial) copy of the file under the destination
        name.

        You may use the "mv" alias for this function in the same way that
        you may use the "cp" alias for "copy".

    syscopy
        File::Copy also provides the "syscopy" routine, which copies the
        file specified in the first parameter to the file specified in the
        second parameter, preserving OS-specific attributes and file
        structure. For Unix systems, this is equivalent to the simple "copy"
        routine, which doesn't preserve OS-specific attributes. For VMS
        systems, this calls the "rmscopy" routine (see below). For OS/2
        systems, this calls the "syscopy" XSUB directly. For Win32 systems,
        this calls "Win32::CopyFile".

        Special behaviour if "syscopy" is defined (OS/2, VMS and Win32):

        If both arguments to "copy" are not file handles, then "copy" will
        perform a "system copy" of the input file to a new output file, in
        order to preserve file attributes, indexed file structure, *etc.*
        The buffer size parameter is ignored. If either argument to "copy"
        is a handle to an opened file, then data is copied using Perl
        operators, and no effort is made to preserve file attributes or
        record structure.

        The system copy routine may also be called directly under VMS and
        OS/2 as "File::Copy::syscopy" (or under VMS as
        "File::Copy::rmscopy", which is the routine that does the actual
        work for syscopy).

    rmscopy($from,$to[,$date_flag])
        The first and second arguments may be strings, typeglobs, typeglob
        references, or objects inheriting from IO::Handle; they are used in
        all cases to obtain the *filespec* of the input and output files,
        respectively. The name and type of the input file are used as
        defaults for the output file, if necessary.

        A new version of the output file is always created, which inherits
        the structure and RMS attributes of the input file, except for owner
        and protections (and possibly timestamps; see below). All data from
        the input file is copied to the output file; if either of the first
        two parameters to "rmscopy" is a file handle, its position is
        unchanged. (Note that this means a file handle pointing to the
        output file will be associated with an old version of that file
        after "rmscopy" returns, not the newly created version.)

        The third parameter is an integer flag, which tells "rmscopy" how to
        handle timestamps. If it is < 0, none of the input file's timestamps
        are propagated to the output file. If it is > 0, then it is
        interpreted as a bitmask: if bit 0 (the LSB) is set, then timestamps
        other than the revision date are propagated; if bit 1 is set, the
        revision date is propagated. If the third parameter to "rmscopy" is
        0, then it behaves much like the DCL COPY command: if the name or
        type of the output file was explicitly specified, then no timestamps
        are propagated, but if they were taken implicitly from the input
        filespec, then all timestamps other than the revision date are
        propagated. If this parameter is not supplied, it defaults to 0.

        "rmscopy" is VMS specific and cannot be exported; it must be
        referenced by its full name, e.g.:

          File::Copy::rmscopy($from, $to) or die $!;

        Like "copy", "rmscopy" returns 1 on success. If an error occurs, it
        sets $!, deletes the output file, and returns 0.

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

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

AUTHOR
    File::Copy was written by Aaron Sherman *<ajs AT ajs.com>* in 1995, and
    updated by Charles Bailey *<bailey AT newman.edu>* in 1996.