Here are the pointers I collected so far in two groups but in no particular order within the groups:
Local resources:
* Serach the FAQ that comes with Perl: perldoc -q "SOME QUESTION"
Specifically this did not have anything about on how to copy a file. While the FAQ is very good it is also constrained by the time of the good people who maintain it
* Search in perldoc perlfunc
obviously this did not have anything about file copy either and in general if there is no such function in Perl, then this is not useful
* ActivePerl users (at least on Windows) have HTML version of the documentation
* In his post Tad McClellan gave a nice step-by-step approach to solve the problem
On-line resources:
* Google groups and the Advanced search of Google Groups
* Regular search using Google
* News groups - comp.lang.perl.misc,comp.lang.perl.modules, and several others (The news server of perl.org)
* Ask on the IRC)
* search.cpan.org
*
www.perldoc.com but it is currently down.
* Various mailing lists for beginners
* PerlMonks
* Find the local Perl Mongers (mailing list, personal contact whatever)
Still, I'd be interested in other ways, monks might use:
So
When you have a question such as "how to copy a file", what do you do to find a solutions ?
Do you prefer to use local resources or on-line resources ?
If you are coming from another programming languages, how would you look for an answer in that language ?
Looking back to my original question, interestingly I have not even thought about International Perl Resources, but that's another issue that might be addressed here.