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@ajs.com> in 1995, and updated by Charles
       Bailey <bailey@newman.upenn.edu> in 1996.