Hi adriang,

I contend there are several issues here, least of which is the filename containing a space.

Firstly, use strict and warnings, if you did already, pls include with code example to show this. Secondly, copy, afaik is not a perl built-in (perldoc -f copy = not found).

copy is a utility function which can be found in another module similar to File::Spec, I cannot recall which this moment. So basically, opendir to copy files from, readdir, filter, read contents into filehandle, open new filehandle name in destination directory, print contents.

Untested! But, principally something like this, if the 'copy' containing module cannot be used.

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Spec::Functions qw/catfile/;


my $dirnameto = catfile(qq{pr book});
my $dirnamefrom = catfile(qq{pr perl_by_example});

opendir( $dhandlefrom, $dirnamefrom )or die;

while (my $file=readdir($dirhandlefrom)) {
    next if $file =~ /\./;
    
    my $filecontents;
    
    {local $/ = undef; # slurp mode;
     open( my $tfh, '<', catfile( qq{$dirnamefrom $file} ) ) or die;
     $filecontents = <$tfh>;
     close $tfh; # for clarity;
    }

    open( my $filecopy, '>', catfile( qq{$dirnameto $file} )) or die; 
+ 

    print { $filecopy } $filecontents;
   
    close $filecopy;

}
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DC

Thanks for the explain and for the answer. I'm afraid it does not work, I get: " Died at /proj/work.pl line 9. " Something is not working with "catfile"

not quite. Couple of straight forward syntax errors. Catfile is probably fine, as the program died at an expected line, and, has compiled without complaining about the existence of the function catfile. But the arguments passed to it are amiss. This is probably due to the paths not being stated relatively in the rough draught.

There was a thirdly, I did not mention previously. Thirdly, Paths and Files are different entities. You are using two directory opens when that is not needed for this copy operation. I think you may need to review the difference between a path and a file. To further complicate this issue, a Directory is a File. Well it is easier to say that both a directory and a file can be recognised as a string (or path). You then need to treat that string correctly depending whether it is a file, or a directory.

P.S. That is what untested means, 'probably does not work, but you get the gist...'

hope this helps. DoC

Generally files with spaces are no problem as long as you are not using the shell. You didn't include your code for the copy function, but if it works on directories without spaces, I expect it uses the cp shell command (which can be dangerous depending on how it is used and exactly how it is implemented).

The code below will be safe as it never passes the file names to the shell.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; use warnings;

use Path::Class;
use File::Copy::Recursive qw/ dircopy /;

my $source = "/pr/perl_by_example";
my $dest = "/pr/book";

for my $path (dir($source)->children) {
    next if $path =~ /\./;

    my $target = dir($dest, $path->basename);
    dircopy $path, $target or die "Error copying $path: $!";
}
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dir($source)->children will not include the '.' and '..' special directories, but will include everything else (including hidden files and directories). Thus, I left your $path =~ /\./ test in place. However, that test looks suspicious since it will match a '.' anywhere in the name (beginning, middle, end) so will usually match file names as well (but not always, since not all file names have an extension). To exclude hidden files and directories use: next if $path =~ /^\./; To exclude all files and only copy directories next unless $path->is_dir; If you want to exclude both (all hidden files and directories as well as all file), I would suggest including both tests separately:

for my $path (dir($source)->children) {
    next if $path =~ /^\./;     # exclude hidden files and directories
    next unless $path->is_dir;  # exclude files

    my $target = dir($dest, $path->basename);
    dircopy $path, $target or die "Error copying $path: $!";
}
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Thanks very much, it did the work :-) Adrian

The Below code does not work.

Yes, it doesn't compile for me either :) This does compile

#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict;
use warnings;
use Path::Tiny qw/ path cwd /;
my @files = grep { -f $_ } path( '/pr/perl_by_example/' )->children();
for my $source ( @files ) {
    my $destination = path( "/pr/book/", $source->basename );
    $source->copy( $destination );
}
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Thanks for the quick replay, Unfortunately the dest dir is empty and I don't get any error when I run the script.

well, then you got no files

A very nice code snippet. Thank you, Anonymous Monk.