Perl File::Copy is not actually copying the file - perl

Question

Quick synopsis: Let's say there are multiple of the same file type in one directory (in this example, 10 .txt files). I am trying to use Perl's copy function to copy 5 of them into a new directory, then zip up that directory.
The code works...except the folder that is supposed to have the .txt files copied, doesn't actually have anything in it, and I don't know why. Here is my complete code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Copy;
my $source_dir = "C:\\Users\\user\\Documents\\test";
my $dest_dir = "C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\files";
my $count = 0;
opendir(DIR, $source_dir) or die $!;
system('mkdir files');
while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {
print "$file\n";
if ($count eq 5) {
last;
}
if ($file =~ /\.txt/) {
copy("$file", "$dest_dir/$file");
$count++;
}
}
closedir DIR;
system('"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_66\bin\jar.exe" -cMf files.zip files');
system('del /S /F /Q files');
system('rmdir files');
Everything works...the directory files is created, then zipped up into files.zip...when I open the zip file, the files directory is empty, so it's as if the copy statement didn't copy anything over.
In the $source_dir are 10 .txt files, like this (for testing purposes):
test1.txt
test2.txt
test3.txt
test4.txt
test5.txt
test6.txt
test7.txt
test8.txt
test9.txt
test10.txt
The files don't actually get copied over...NOTE: the print "$file\n" was added for testing, and it indeed is printing out test1.txt, test2.txt, etc. up to test6.txt so I know that it is finding the files, just not copying them over.
Any thoughts as to where I'm going wrong?

Answer 1

I think there is a typo in your script:
system('mkdir files');
should be:
system("mkdir $dest_dir");
but, the real issue is that you are not using the full path of the source file. Change your copy to:
copy("$source_dir/$file", $dest_dir);
and see if that helps.
You might also want to look at: File::Path and Archive::Zip, they would eliminate the system calls.