Re^2: Fastest way to copy a file from 1 directory to another directory

I don't know all the reasons why, but I do know that Abigail, world-famous Perl hacker, hates File::Copy. He's presented a Lightning Talk about it (there's a video of the talk).

I just want to make sure you are aware about the issues.

Comment on Re^2: Fastest way to copy a file from 1 directory to another directory

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Re^3: Fastest way to copy a file from 1 directory to another directory by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Mar 30, 2008 at 15:53 UTC
Watching the video, in pieces as it downloads enough to play, I see he uses File::Copy to copy an executable file and it doesn't execute. That sounds like something odd about the implementation of File::Copy on Nix, or the underlying file copying OS call it defers to. On Windows, the copy file OS function copies everything including security streams. On the other hand, there is no 'cp' on Windows, so calling system cp won't work either. So I don't like his final quote about people who don't understand unix tend to reinvent it badly. Instead, people who don't know unix write native file copy API's that work sensibly in the first place. What I want* is a function to copy a file (or directory) that works robustly and has implementations for all platforms. He's arguing that File::Copy isn't it. —John	[reply]

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Re^3: Fastest way to copy a file from 1 directory to another directory
by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Mar 30, 2008 at 15:53 UTC

That sounds like something odd about the implementation of File::Copy on *Nix, or the underlying file copying OS call it defers to. On Windows, the copy file OS function copies everything including security streams. On the other hand, there is no 'cp' on Windows, so calling system cp won't work either.

So I don't like his final quote about people who don't understand unix tend to reinvent it badly. Instead, people who don't know unix write native file copy API's that work sensibly in the first place.

What I want is a function to copy a file (or directory) that works robustly and has implementations for all platforms. He's arguing that File::Copy isn't it.

—John

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