System "rename" command

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John Horner - 08 Jan 2006 01:25 GMT

I was trying to do something involving renaming files the other day and
I wrote:

system("rename $originalname $newname");

and got an error. I figured out in the end I was getting confused --
perl has a rename function and if I want to do the system way, I need
"mv" instead.

But when I do "man rename" I get a manpage. So how come in Panther I
don't have a system rename command but I do have a manpage for it?

Supplementary question. If you were moving, copying and renaming files,
would you use File::Copy instead of cp and mv?

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John Delacour - 08 Jan 2006 01:52 GMT

>Supplementary question. If you were moving, copying and renaming
>files, would you use File::Copy instead of cp and mv?

You should first consider ditto if there is any chance your files
contain valuable resource forks.

% ditto --rsrc ...

JD

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Dominic Dunlop - 08 Jan 2006 17:41 GMT

>> Supplementary question. If you were moving, copying and renaming
>> files, would you use File::Copy instead of cp and mv?

Because by doing so you will make your script portable to Windows,
VMS, z/OS, Symbian ... However, I just checked, and the module does
not handle Mac OS X resource forks, so

> You should first consider ditto if there is any chance your files
> contain valuable resource forks.
>
> % ditto --rsrc ...

No need to bother with this Mac OS X-specific wrinkle if you're
running Tiger -- from <http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/>:

"Use command-line commands safely on HFS+ files. Utilities such as
cp, mv, tar, rsync now use the same standard APIs as Spotlight and
access control lists to handle resource forks properly."

So use File::Copy for portability across operating systems (provided
you know you'll never meet a resource fork on Mac OS), ditto for
portability across Mac OS X versions, or mv for portability across
UNIX versions (including Mac OS X 10.4, but not lower). Phew.

Looking at the POD, I find that

"File::Copy also provides the "syscopy" routine, which copies the
file specified in the first parameter to the file specified in the
second parameter, preserving OS-specific attributes and file structure."

Umm, no it doesn't on Mac OS X. However

"On Mac OS (Classic), "syscopy" calls "Mac::MoreFiles::FSpFileCopy",
if available."

As Tiger makes Mac::MoreFiles::FSpFileCopy available (previous
releases don't), and the function does indeed copy a file including
its resource fork (although it lost the icon for the file I'm testing
with -- maybe that's a Finder thing), I consider it a bug that
File::Copy does not use it if it can on Mac OS X. With your
permission, I'll raise a bug report.

Signature

Dominic Dunlop

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grassie@att.net - 08 Jan 2006 01:56 GMT

From: John Horner <bounce@johnhorner.nu>

> But when I do "man rename" I get a manpage. So how come in Panther I
> don't have a system rename command but I do have a manpage for it?

That appears to be a Section 2 manpage (system call, not a command).
Commands are in Section 1. Try:

man 1 rename

(no joy)

Paul
grassie@perl.com

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Mac Forum / Programming / Perl / January 2006

System "rename" command