Directories are lists of associations between names and files. Renaming a file just changes the directories. The file itself is untouched.

Since directories in one partition/disk/system can't refer to files in another, you can't rename files from one partition/disk/system to another.

To copy a file then delete the original, you can use File::Copy's move

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

I used File::Copy's move(), and that seemed to work. But it moved all of the files except two. All the files I want to move are in one directory and have a .NEF extension. They are mixed in with other files having a .JPG or .AVI extension.

I had my script print out the name of each file before moving it. Here is part of the output:

DSC_0102.NEF
DSC_0098.NEF
DSC_0103.NEF
DSC_0104.NEF
DSC_0101.NEF
Couldn't move DSC_0101.NEF: Operation not permitted at 2perl.pl line 3
+0
...
...
DSC_0135.NEF
DSC_0136.NEF
Couldn't move DSC_0136.NEF: Operation not permitted at 2perl.pl line 3
+0.
DSC_0137.NEF
...
...
[download]

Here is my code:

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;
use File::Find;
use File::Copy;

my $destination_dir = "/Users/me/Pictures/a b c d";

my $volume_name = "/Volumes/Volume\\ Name"; 
#need double slash in path for glob() in next line
#(see glob docs)

for (glob "$volume_name/*") {
    if (-d) {
        find(\&wanted, $_);
    }
}

sub wanted {
    if (-f && /\.NEF$/) {
        my $new_path = "$destination_dir/$_";
        say $_;
        move $_, $new_path or warn "Couldn't move $_: $!";  #**LINE 30
+***
    }
}
[download]

A permission problem could indicate another process has the file open.