File::Copy failing on WIndows XP

[noleander]

Hi. I'm a long-time Unix programmer reluctantly going to the PC. In an effort to drag along my environment, I'm trying to get Perl working under XP. I've got a "hello world" working okay, but now I'm trying to copy a file:

use File::Copy;
copy ( "C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\SpectraSonics\Scripts_n_Tools\junk1.txt" ,
"C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\SpectraSonics\Scripts_n_Tools\junk2.txt" )
or die "copy failed $!";

The error I get when running this is:

copy failed No such file or directory at junk.txt line 2.

The source file does exist. Doesnt Perl on the PC handle back slashes?

And I also tried using system ("cp source dest") and that failed also.

Any help would be appreciated
neal

 

[noleander]

I changed the slashes to forward slashes and the copy command started working.

Odd that Perl does not use the slash convention of the host computer, but I can live with forward slashes on XP.

 

[columb]

Try doubling your slashes. Like you I'm a Unix programmer at heart and when I work in the Windows environment I constantly curse Mr Gates for puttng the slashes the wrong way round. Perl, like C, interprets \n, for example, as new line. This means that

"C:\new directory"

would be interpreted as

C:
ew directory

To prevent this 'escape' the backslahes with a backslash to get

C:\\new directory

Columb Healy

 

[KevinADC]

Windows is not finicky about the slashes for machine paths, it will work with back or forward slashes. But perl is finicky, because as columb notes, the backslash is a special character.

You can also single-quote your path statements if you want to keep backslashes and avoid interpolation of special characters:

copy ( 'C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My  Documents\SpectraSonics\Scripts_n_Tools\junk1.txt','C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\SpectraSonics\Scripts_n_Tools\junk2.txt' )
   or die "copy failed  $!";