Xcopy file, rename, suppress “Does xxx specify a file name…” message

command linecommand-promptxcopy

This seems pretty simple and maybe I'm just overlooking the proper flag, but how would I, in one command, copy a file from one directory to another and rename it in the destination directory? Here's my command:

if exist "bin\development\whee.config.example"
  if not exist "TestConnectionExternal\bin\Debug\whee.config"
    xcopy "bin\development\whee.config.example"
          "TestConnectionExternal\bin\Debug\whee.config"

It prompts me with the following every time:

Does TestConnectionExternal\bin\Debug\whee.config specify a file name
or directory name on the target (F = file, D = directory)?

I want to suppress this prompt; the answer is always F.

Best Answer

I use

echo f | xcopy /f /y srcfile destfile

to get around it.

Related Solutions

Using xcopy to copy files from several directories to one directory

As DandDI said, you don't need xcopy. for statement helps much. However, you don't need to state process outcome of dir command as well, this command helps better

for /R c:\source %f in (*.xml) do copy "%f" x:\destination\

By the way, when you use it from a batch file, you need to add spare % in front of variable %f hence your command line should be;

for /R c:\source %%f in (*.xml) do copy %%f x:\destination\

when you use it within a batch

Should surround %f with double quotes otherwise it will fail copying file names with spaces

Batch File XCopy Command

Well, you left out the second statement the help gives about /I:

/I           If destination does not exist and copying more than one file,
             assumes that destination must be a directory.

You are only ever copying one file at a time, so /I doesn't apply.

You can probably hack-solving this by piping F into the command and suppressing output:

echo F|xcopy ..\..\Common\%%a Common\%%a /i /d /c /v /s /y /f >nul

(Won't work on non-English versions of Windows; but probably that's the least of your problems, given that the batch already fails for file names with spaces :-))

You could try building a single long list of file names to copy:

setlocal enabledelayedexpansion enableextensions
set LIST=
for /f %%a in (FilesToCopy.txt) do set LIST=!LIST! "..\..\Common\%%a"
xcopy %LIST% Common /i /d /c /v /s /y /f

This requires two passes over the initial file, though. And it fails when the list of file names gets longer than 8190 characters.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Using xcopy to copy files from several directories to one directory

Batch File XCopy Command

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