How can I copy a directory recursively and filter filenames in Perl?

Question

How do I copy a directory including sub directories excluding files or directories that match a certain regex on a Windows system?

Answer 1

I'd do something like this:

use File::Copy;
sub copy_recursively {
    my ($from_dir, $to_dir, $regex) = @_;
    opendir my($dh), $from_dir or die "Could not open dir '$from_dir': $!";
    for my $entry (readdir $dh) {
        next if $entry =~ /$regex/;
        my $source = "$from_dir/$entry";
        my $destination = "$to_dir/$entry";
        if (-d $source) {
            mkdir $destination or die "mkdir '$destination' failed: $!" if not -e $destination;
            copy_recursively($source, $destination, $regex);
        } else {
            copy($source, $destination) or die "copy failed: $!";
        }
    }
    closedir $dh;
    return;
}

Answer 2

Another option is File::Xcopy. As the name says, it more-or-less emulates the windows xcopy command, including its filtering and recursive options.

From the documentation:

    use File::Xcopy;

    my $fx = new File::Xcopy; 
    $fx->from_dir("/from/dir");
    $fx->to_dir("/to/dir");
    $fx->fn_pat('(\.pl|\.txt)$');  # files with pl & txt extensions
    $fx->param('s',1);             # search recursively to sub dirs
    $fx->param('verbose',1);       # search recursively to sub dirs
    $fx->param('log_file','/my/log/file.log');
    my ($sr, $rr) = $fx->get_stat; 
    $fx->xcopy;                    # or
    $fx->execute('copy'); 

    # the same with short name
    $fx->xcp("from_dir", "to_dir", "file_name_pattern");

Answer 3

If you happen to be on a Unix-like OS and have access to rsync (1), you should use that (for example through system()).

Perl's File::Copy is a bit broken (it doesn't copy permissions on Unix systems, for example), so if you don't want to use your system tools, look at CPAN. Maybe File::Copy::Recursive could be of use, but I don't see any exclude options. I hope somebody else has a better idea.

Answer 4

I don't know how to do an exclusion with a copy, but you could work something up along the lines of:

ls -R1 | grep -v <regex to exclude> | awk '{printf("cp %s /destination/path",$1)}' | /bin/sh

Answer 5

A classic answer would use 'cpio -p':

(cd $SOURCE_DIR; find . -type f -print) |
perl -ne 'print unless m/<regex-goes-here>/' |
cpio -pd $TARGET_DIR

The 'cpio' command deals with the actual copying, including permission preservation. The trick of 'cd $SOURCE_DIR; find . ...' deals with removing the leading part of the source path from the names. The only problem with that invocation of 'find' is that it won't follow symlinks; you need to add '-follow' if that's what you want.