BATCH file asks for file or folder

Question

I have a simple copy from to script for one of our guys who s missing a file 20km from my desk  when testing the script out I am prompted if my file shapes atc is a file or a folder   I can tell you that its a file but how can I autocopy it over my guy needs to be able to just click the batch finished  xcopy  s y J   My Name   FILES IN TRANSIT  JOHN20101126  Missing file  Shapes atc C   Documents and Settings   His name   Application Data  Autodesk  AutoCAD 2010   R18 0  enu Support Shapes atc

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xcopy  s y J   My Name   FILES IN TRANSIT  JOHN20101126  Missing file  Shapes atc C   Documents and Settings   His name   Application Data  Autodesk  AutoCAD 2010   R18 0  enu Support          should do it   Good idea to do an   IF NOT EXIST  C  Documents and Settings His name Application Data Autodesk AutoCAD 2010 R18 0 enu Support Shapes atc  ECHO   amp  amp  ECHO   amp  amp  ECHO           COPY FAILED - Call JustME at 555-555-1212  amp  amp  ECHO   amp  amp  pause    assuming you ve done a rename of previous version to  old   XCOPY   Z   lt ----- restartable mode - good for large files

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I had exactly the same problem  where is wanted to copy a file into an external hard drive for backup purposes  If I wanted to copy a complete folder  then COPY was quite happy to create the destination folder and populate it with all the files  However  I wanted to copy a file once a day and add today s date to the file  COPY was happy to copy the file and rename it in the new format  but only as long as the destination folder already existed   my copy command looked like this   COPY C  SRCFOLDER MYFILE doc D  DESTFOLDER MYFILE YYYYMMDD doc  Like you  I looked around for alternative switches or other copy type commands  but nothing really worked like I wanted it to  Then I thought about splitting out the two different requirements by simply adding a make directory   MD or MKDIR   command before the copy command   So now i have  MKDIR D  DESTFOLDER  COPY C  SRCFOLDER MYFILE doc D  DESTFOLDER MYFILE YYYYMMDD doc  If the destination folder does NOT exist  then it creates it  If the destination folder DOES exist  then it generates an error message   BUT  this does not stop the batch file from continuing on to the copy command   The error message says  A subdirectory or file D  DESTFOLDER already exists  As i said  the error message doesn t stop the batch file working and it is a really simple fix to the problem   Hope that this helps

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The virtual parent trick  Assuming you have your source and destination file in   SRC FILENAME  and  DST FILENAME    you could use a 2 step method    REM on my win 7 system mkdir creates all parent directories also mkdir   DST FILENAME      xcopy   SRC FILENAME    DST FILENAME        this would be resolved to e g  mkdir  c  destination b c file txt      REM The special trick here is that mkdir can create the parent  REM directory of a  virtual  directory  c  destination b c file txt   that   REM doesn t even need to exist   REM So the directory  c  destination b c  is created here   REM mkdir  c  destination b c dummystring     would have the same effect  xcopy  c  source b c file txt   c  destination b c file txt      REM xcopy computes the real location of   c  destination b c file txt      REM which is the now existing directory  c  destination b c   REM  the parent directory of the  virtual  directory c  destination b c file txt      I came to the idea when I stumbled over some really wild      -constructs in the command lines generated from a build process

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The trick of appending     can be made to work when the new extension is shorter  You need to pad the new extension with blanks  which can only be done by enclosing the destination file name in quotes  For example   xcopy foo shtml  foo html      This will copy and rename without prompting    That s not a bug  it s a feature    I once saw a VW Beetle in the Microsoft parking lot with the vanity plate  FEATURE    These semantics for rename go all the way back to when I wrote DOS v 1  Characters in the new name are substituted one by one for characters in the old name  unless a wildcard character    or    is present in the new name  Without adding the blank s  to the new name  remaining characters are copied from the old name

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Actually xcopy does not ask you if the original file exists  but if you want to put it in a new folder named Shapes atc  or in the folder Support  which is what you want   To prevent xcopy from asking this  just tell him the destination folder  so there s no ambiguity    xcopy  s y  J  Old path Shapes atc   C  Documents and Settings his name Support    If you want to change the filename in destination just use copy  which is more adapted than xcopy when copying files    copy  y  J  Old path Shapes atc   C  Documents and Settings his name Support Shapes-new atc

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Referencing XCopy Force File  For forcing files  we could use pipeline  echo F      C  Trash gt xcopy 23 txt 24 txt Does 24 txt specify a file name or directory name on the target  F   file  D   directory    C  Trash gt echo F   xcopy 23 txt 24 txt Does 24 txt specify a file name or directory name on the target  F   file  D   directory   F C 23 txt 1 File s  copied   For forcing a folder  we could use  i parameter for xcopy or using a backslash   at the end of the destination folder

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The real trick is  Use a Backslash at the end of the target path where to copy the file  The  Y is for overwriting existing files  if you want no warnings    Example   xcopy  Y  C  file from here txt   C  file to here

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echo f   xcopy  s y J   My Name   FILES IN TRANSIT  JOHN20101126  Missing file  Shapes atc C   Documents and Settings   His name   Application Data  Autodesk  AutoCAD 2010   R18 0  enu Support Shapes atc

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A seemingly undocumented trick is to put a   at the end of the destination - then xcopy will copy as a file  like so   xcopy c  source file txt c  destination newfile txt    The echo f   xcopy     trick does not work on localized versions of Windows  where the prompt is different

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Well  for the task as asked by just me the perhaps best solution would be the following command according to the incomplete advice of Andy Morris   xcopy  J  My Name FILES IN TRANSIT JOHN20101126 Missing file Shapes atc   C  Documents and Settings His name Application Data Autodesk AutoCAD 2010 R18 0 enu Support    Q  R  S  Y   This works for this simple file copying task because of   specifying just the destination directory instead of destination file and ending destination directory with a backslash which is very important as otherwise XCOPY would even with  I prompt for file or directory on copying just a single file    The other parameters not related to the question are     Q     quiet  Y     yes  OS language independent  on overwrite existing file  R     overwrite also read-only  hidden and system file  S     from specified directory and all subdirectories    Well  I don t know if  S is really needed here because it is unclear if just J  My Name FILES IN TRANSIT JOHN20101126 Missing file Shapes atc should be copied or all Shapes atc found anywhere in directory tree of J  My Name FILES IN TRANSIT JOHN20101126 Missing file   The explanation for the parameters can be read by opening a command prompt window and running from within this window xcopy    to get output the help for XCOPY     But none of the provided solutions worked for a file copying task on which a single file should be copied into same directory as source file  but with a different file name because of current date and time is inserted in file name before file extension   The source file can have hidden or system attribute set which excludes the usage of COPY command   The batch file for creating the time stamped file should work also on Windows XP which excludes ROBOCOPY because by default not available on Windows XP   The batch file should work with any file including non typical files like  gitconfig or  htaccess which are files without a file extension starting with a point to hide them on  nix systems  Windows command processor interprets such files as files with no file name and having just a file extension because of the rule that everything after last point is the extension of the file and everything before last point is the file name   For a complete task description and the final  fully commented solution see the post Create a backup copy of files in UltraEdit forum   Patrick s  Tirtha R s  Interociter Operator s and CharlesB s solutions do not work because using  Y does not avoid the file or directory prompt if the destination file does not already exist   Andy Morris  and grenix s solutions can t be used for the single file copying task as destination must be the name of destination file and not the name of destination directory  The destination directory is the same as the source directory  but name of destination file is different to name of source file   DosMan s and Govert s solutions simply don t work for files starting with a point and not having a file extension   For example the command  xcopy C  Temp  gitconfig C  Temp  gitconfig 2016-03-07 15-30-00   C  H  K  Q  R  V  Y   results in following error message on execution      English    Could not expand second file name so as to match first    German  Zweiter Dateiname konnte nicht so erweitert werden  dass er zum ersten passt    And finally Denis Ivin s solution has the restriction that the operating system language dependent character for an automatic answering of the file OR directory prompt must be known   So I thought about methods to get F for File on English Windows or D for Datei on German Windows or   for     on     Windows automatically   And it is indeed possible to determine the language dependent character for an automatic answering of the prompt   A hack is used to get the language dependent letter from prompt text without really copying any file   Command XCOPY is used to start copying the batch file itself to folder for temporary files with file extension being TMP for destination file  This results in a prompt by XCOPY if there is not already a file with that name in temporary files folder which is very unlikely   The handler of device NUL is used as an input handler for XCOPY resulting in breaking the copying process after the prompt was output by XCOPY two times   This output is processed in a FOR loop which is exited on first line starting with an opening parenthesis  This is the line on which second character defines the letter to use for specifying that destination is a file   Here is a batch file using XCOPY with the code to determine the required letter for an automatic answering of the file or directory prompt to create a time stamped copy of a single file in same directory as the source file even if source file is a hidden or system file and even if the source file starts with a point and does not have a file extension    echo off rem Batch file must be started or called with name of a single file   if    1        exit  B for  F  delims       I in      1    do if not    I         1   exit  B if not exist    1  exit  B if exist    1   exit  B setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion  rem Determine the character needed for answering prompt of rem XCOPY for destination being a file and not a directory   del  F   TEMP    n0 tmp  2 gt nul for  F   I in    SystemRoot  System32 xcopy exe    f0    TEMP    n0 tmp    lt nul   do       set  PromptAnswer   I      if   PromptAnswer  0 1                    set  PromptAnswer  PromptAnswer  1 1           goto CopyFile         echo ERROR  Failed to determine letter for answering prompt of XCOPY  exit  B   CopyFile rem This is a workaround for files starting with a point and having no rem file extension like many hidden files on  nix copied to Windows   if    n1              set  FileNameWithPath   dpx1      set  FileExtension     else       set  FileNameWithPath   dpn1      set  FileExtension   x1     rem Get local date and time in region and language independent format YYYYMMDDHHmmss rem and reformat the local date and time to format YYYY-MM-DD HH-mm-ss   for  F  tokens 2 delims       I in    SystemRoot  System32 wbem wmic exe OS get LocalDateTime  format value   do set  LocalDateTime   I  set  LocalDateTime  LocalDateTime  0 4 - LocalDateTime  4 2 - LocalDateTime  6 2   LocalDateTime  8 2 - LocalDateTime  10 2 - LocalDateTime  12 2    rem Do the copy with showing what is copied and with printing success or rem an error message if copying fails for example on sharing violation   echo Copy    f1  to   FileNameWithPath   LocalDateTime  FileExtension    for  F   I in   echo  PromptAnswer      SystemRoot  System32 xcopy exe    f1    FileNameWithPath   LocalDateTime  FileExtension    C  H  K  Q  R  V  Y   do set  FilesCopied   I   if   FilesCopied       1        echo Success   else       echo ERROR  Copying failed  see error message above      This batch code was tested on German Windows XP SP3 x86 and English Windows 7 SP1 x64   See the post Create a backup copy of files in UltraEdit forum for a similar  fully commented batch file explaining all parts of the batch code   For understanding the used commands and how they work  open a command prompt window  execute there the following commands  and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully    del    echo    exit    for    goto    if    rem    set    setlocal    wmic OS get    xcopy      Further the Microsoft article about Using command redirection operators should be read  too

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The  i switch might be what your after   From xcopy      I           If destination does not exist and copying more than one file               assumes that destination must be a directory

[batch-file] BATCH file asks for file or folder

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Examples related to xcopy