It sounds like you're trying to run the cp or copy commands from the perl script directly, much as you would do in shell script. You can't really do that - if you want to run a system command (such as cp), you'd need to invoke perl's system() function - e.g.:

system("cp file1 file2");
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If you want to copy files in an operating system-independent way (and you probably do), then I'd like to direct you to the File::Copy module, which comes with Perl as standard. Use it thusly: (ripped verbatim out the POD)

use File::Copy;
copy("file1","file2");
copy("Copy.pm",\*STDOUT);'
move("/dev1/fileA","/dev2/fileB");
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Hope this helps
davis
Is this going out live?
No, Homer, very few cartoons are broadcast live - it's a terrible strain on the animator's wrist
Update: Minor typo fix