This is not a bug in File::Copy but more likely an error in your understanding of how your shell launches programs and parses command line parameters. You can confirm this by printing out the parameters your program gets:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
print "Using '$ARGV[0]' as source\n";
print "Using '$ARGV[1]' as target\n";
print "Leftover arguments: '$ARGV[2]'\n";
[download]

Depending on what shell you're using, reading the manual on "quoting" helps, but alternatively, most shells use quoting rules not entirely unlikely to Perl's own rules. In short, if you want to include a blank in a command line argument, you need to quote it in the shell.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Copy;

my $source = $ARGV[0];
my $target = $ARGV[1];
copy($source, $target) or die "Can't copy files ($!) ($?)\n";
[download]

./copy.pl "testing spaces.txt" output.txt
[download]

hi, thanks for your reply to all of you.

The sample I gave was more for testing. In my real project I get the source url from a database.
I pass them also quoated to copy(), but I always get this error ($!): (No such file or directory)

If I print source and target URL to check if they are quoted I get:
source: '/Users/ademmler/testing mit leerzeichen/myfile.pdf'
target: '/Users/wfdata/myfile.pdf'

I have tried to use singel and double quotes . . . no change.
Mac OS X escapes the blank with \ and if I pass the path to my above testscript like this it works also. But if I try to add a \ via regex into the URL it does not work . . .

Regards Alex

ademmler,

Firstly, these are not URLs the are paths to files.

Secondly, are you sure you have permissions to read from/write to the source file and target directory? Please show us the code you are actually using, and how you are calling it. Have you tried quoting the parameters you are passing to the copy command?

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Copy;

my $source = $ARGV[0];
my $target = $ARGV[1];
copy("$source", "$target") or die "Can't copy files ($!)\n"
[download]

Update: Fixed typo, reworded last sentence. Hope this helps

Martin