Making a new template or subtemplate and selecting an existing one to copy from sometimes works, and sometimes yields a blank file. I don't know what the variable is and I don't remember this being a problem before yesterday.

I recently upgraded to wp 3.5.1. (I skipped the upgrade to 3.5.)

Is anybody else having this problem?

Creating main templates works fine. And you can copy from any existing main template

Copying sub templates takes an extra step.
- add the template with the name you want
- go to the template you want to copy, select all and copy
- go to the new template you created and paste and save

all done.

note: this works for bfa_loop() but not get_header() or get_footer()

this issue has been fixed. see Patch 113-05: copy does not work with 'Add Sub Templates'