I tried to answer this earlier, but I got nowhere. There's really no good answer to 'Why isn't there a "copy" function?'. I could say it has to do with there not being an equivalent OS call and C function (like "rename" and "unlink"), but like you said, manupilating files is very a common activity in perl.
Keep in mind that "copy" can be created from other system calls (open + sysread + syswrite + close), while "rename" and "unlink" cannot.
Then again, if we started including everything common into core... I guess the answer is bloat protection. That begs the question "Should many core functions be moved into modules?" Well, not in perl5, that would break too much, but that's something we could do in perl6.
Ah well, just felt like writting a mini-essay.
Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
Please read these before you post! —
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
- a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
| |
For: |
|
Use: |
| & | | & |
| < | | < |
| > | | > |
| [ | | [ |
| ] | | ] |
Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.
|
|
