What Perl does have is multiple mechanisms for running *nix commands. Often this is the clearest way to do something. Would you rather write 10+ lines of code, checking whether a node is a file or a directory then making that directory or copying that file or would you prefer the following?

`cp -rp blah1 blah2`;
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or

system ("cp -rp blah1 blah2");
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or even

qx/cp -rp blah1 blah2/;
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Just don't forget to check the process' return value "$?"