XCOPY

Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V is the easiest thing that a person can do in computers ,  but I had the most difficult copy scripts to run. (Well ... I better have an good explanation for wasting so much time in copying stuff over ;P)

I had to copy files from one server to another over different domains  ... phew. Thank God that it is over. Writing a simple copy did not help, I used XCOPY. I thought why not share my experience with all, and what better place to share than this.

To write a copy script one must keep few things in mind...

• Keep it simple

            xcopy source [destination]
         

            Destination is not mandatory , if you don't give it then it will copy to the current folder from where you are running the script.

• Keep every thing in Quotes

            xcopy "source" "[destination]"
            

            Make sure that your source and destination are in quotation marks. That will save you from the horror of not knowing what went wrong. Spaces in the file name or file path can cause xcopy to think that the 2nd part is the destination :(

• echo f

                Ever seen this :  Does <destination> specify a file name or directory name on the target (F = file, D = directory)?

            Microsoft does provide you with the convenient option of using /i . But what if you don't want it to default it to Directory and reply as file instead?  Imagine how annoying it can be when you have to enter 'f' continuously. That's the last thing how you want to start your day doing. Echo f cam to my rescue. Start the xcopy with echo   f   | so that when the command prompt asks you if it is a file or directory it gets the answer f , that is file.

• Can't find it

            Make sure that the source file path is correct and you have the necessary permission to read and write to the machine.

• Need a Log??

            I know that annoying . How can you know what failed and what passed. I can tell you how. Use test.bat >> test.log to redirect the output of the bat file to the log file .

Now you can look at the errors.

A simple example :
echo f | xcopy  "A\B\c.txt" "X\y\z.txt"