I would like to copy files preserving attributes (something like cp -cdpP) within perl rather than using a system call to *nix 'cp'.

Calling cp is your best option. It can be done safely with multi-arg system

my $rv = system('cp', '-cdpP', ...);
$rv == -1  and die("Can't execute cp: $!\n");
$rv & 0x7F and die("cp died from signal ", ($rv & 0x7F), "\n");
$rv >> 8   and die("Error ", ($rv >> 8), "from cp\n");
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