A coworker asked me for a script. Here’s the request:
… would want to copy all files on this list [an attached text document] to another location (doesn’t really matter where for now). All are currently located in \\server\share\folder. The path in the new location should begin with the part after “folder”…
In a nutshell, here is the high-level description of what the script must do:
Given a text file which provides a list of files, copy the files from a fixed source to a fixed destination, recreating the directory trees on the destination. A simple file copy won’t work because there may be files in the source folders which should not be copied.
Sample content of the text file is:
client\CD120\Samarai Legends\Drafts\drafts folder.txt
client\CD120\Samarai Legends\Inbox\Legends.doc
client\CD120\Bushido Warriors\Inbox\Warrior Code.doc
The solution to this is to make a simple batch file that parses the content of the text file, generating the appropriate xcopy command to copy the file. We’ll call the batch file xcopylist.bat; its one line of content is below. Change c:\temp\ to whatever path you want the files copied to. (I used c:\temp\ for testing.) Change \\server\share\folder to the root folder of the files to copy.
for /f "delims=" %%i in (filelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy "\\server\share\folder\%%i" "c:\temp\%%i" /i /z /y
Put the file list in the same directory as the batch file and name the file list filelist.txt. Then run the batch file and viola! You’ve got to love the for command, which lets you (among other things) parse text files and use the line-by-line output. Another trick in here is the output parser pipe, which allows us to automatically press the “D” key with each xcopy command.
Note: The batch file overwrites files in the destination automatically. To turn this off (have it prompt you), change /y to /y- in the batch file. However, if you’re using Windows NT 4.0, just delete the /y switch altogether – it’s only supported in Windows XP and Windows 2000.
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Thanks Brian for this nice solution. It saved a lot of time for us
Hello,
I would like to implement your script to backup starred picasa photos, these are stored in a file named starlist.txt in the format:
C:\Users\Joe\Pictures\Play\Journeys\New Years 08\IMG_1682.JPG
C:\Users\Joe\Pictures\Play\Journeys\New Years 08\IMG_1683.JPG
etc
The problem being that your script uses the whole file path when duplicating the files, resulting in the following (unusable) address:
C:\temp\C:\Users\Joe\Pictures\Play\Journeys\New Years 08\IMG_1682.JPG
Is there a simple modification that can be made to the script which would remove the “C:\Users\Joe\Pictures” element from the created file path?
Many thanks in advance for your assistance.
The simples thing is to make a copy of starlist.txt, do a search/replace removing all text c:\users\joe\pictures, and running the script against that.
As far as I can remember (it’s been a while), there is no easy way to truncate or replace data in strings from within the Windows shell.
Many thanks for your fast response!
I modified starlist.txt as you suggested, so that each line reads as follows:
\Play\Journeys\Spain 05\Chris’s Photos\DSCN0319.JPG
etc
This duplicated the files successfully, but put each individual image into a folder with the image name, within the correct folder structure e.g:
D:\Starred Photos\Play\Journeys\Spain 05\Chris’s Photos\DSCN0319.JPG\DSCN0319.JPG
I am using the following command:
for /f “delims=” %%i in (starlist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “C:\Users\Joe\Pictures%%i” “D:\Starred Photos\%%i” /i /z /y
Do you have any suggestions on why the folder is being created?
Only thing I can think to try is adding a backslash after the folder “Pictures” in the path “C:\Users\Joe\Pictures%%i” (that is, make it “C:\Users\Joe\Pictures\%%i”
Hi Brian, this script is very useful, i apreciate to much if you can help me to modify
a little this script.
I´ve a filename.txt file with the names of the files something like these
text.txt
text.txt
text.txt
etc…
But the really I need is copy the files with your relative path to another folder
thanks and regards
MM
Not 100% sure what you need… You mention a relative path — relative to what?
Something you can do to help explain may be to give an example of one line in the text file, and an example of how the script would use that line. For example, if one line was this:
test.txt
… and you wanted to generate this:
copy test.txt c:\files\test.txt
… the script would be:
for /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do copy “%%i” “c:\files\%%i”
Give me an illustrative example and I’ll help if I can.
Hi Brian,
Supose that I got a file “filelist.txt” with this content
test.txt
test1.txt
test2.txt
….etc
but these files (test.txt, test1.txt, etc…) are in a differents folders, something like that
c:\Temp\test\test.txt
c:\Temp\test1\test1.txt
c:\Temp\test2\test2.txt
I need copy all of the contents in the “Temp” folder, to another folder “Final”, but including the same folder structure of the “Temp” folder, see below
c:\Final\ \\this folder are empty at first
This is that i will to result after execute the batch file
c:\Final\test\test.txt
c:\Final\test1\test1.txt
c:\Final\test2\test2.txt
But I only have the filelist.txt, this file dont have the relative paths of the files
Ps sorry for my enligish
Thanks and regards
MM
So it sounds like you want to copy only those files whose names are in the given file list. The easiest way I can think of is by doing this:
for /f "delims=" %%i in (filelist.txt) do xcopy "c:\Temp\%%i?" "c:\Final" /i /z /y /sThe two key changes are the question mark at the end of the first path in the xcopy command, and the /s switch.
By adding a question mark to the end of the first path, you allow xcopy to look for “all files that match the pattern”. Of course, this means that test1.txt and test1.txtt would both match, but since it’s unlikely you have files with more than three characters in the extension, this should be fine.
The /s switch tells xcopy to search all subdirectories of the source directory for matching files, and copy them to the destination with the same folder hierarchy.
To test it out, run the following:
xcopy c:\windows\*.log c:\temp /i /z /y /sThis will copy every *.log file from the Windows directory to your c:\temp directory. This will result in operations like the following:
C:\windows\WindowsUpdate.logC:\windows\Debug\blastcln.log
C:\windows\Debug\UserMode\userenv.log
C:\windows\Logs\DirectX.log
C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ngen.log
In the temp directory, you’d have this:
C:\temp\WindowsUpdate.logC:\temp\Debug\blastcln.log
C:\temp\Debug\UserMode\userenv.log
C:\temp\Logs\DirectX.log
C:\temp\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ngen.log
Viola!
Hi Brian, thanks for your help. The script its working ok…I´ve an error in the
sintaxis of the xcopy command…but now is everything OK
Regards
Hi Brian, a need your help one more time
Supose that I got a file “filelist.txt” with this content (names without extensions)
test
test1
test2
test3
test4
….etc
I have a folder with a lot of files named like this form (test.txt, test.xls, test.doc, etc…) see example below
c:\Temp\test.txt
\test.xls
\test.doc
\test1.txt
\test1.xls
\test1.doc
.
.
.
etc.
I need copy all of the contents in the “Temp” folder, to another folder “Final”, with subfolders named like
the name of files and including the files with same name inside of the several folder see below
c:\Final\ \\this folder are empty at first or don´t exist at first
This is that i will to result after execute the batch file
c:\Final\test\test.txt
\test.xls
\test.doc
c:\Final\test1\test1.txt
\test1.xls
\test1.doc
c:\Final\test2\test2.txt
\test2.xls
\test3.doc
Ps sorry for my enligish, I hope I had explained correctly
Thanks and regards
MM
Manuel,
I’d love to help out, but your requests are getting very specialized, and getting close to consulting services. I’ll try to point you in the right direction…
First, you’re going to need to a combination of a FOR loop to parse the filenames in the text file. Next, you need to create the directory, then copy files to it.
Try creating a batch file with this:
for /f "delims=" %%i in (filelist.txt) do (md c:\Final\%%i
xcopy c:\temp\%%i.* c:\Final\%%i /i /z /y /s
)
I didn’t test that but it looks right.
If you need further services, you can consider hiring me as a consultant.
I appear to be having the same issue as Joe.
Before running this in my live environment, I decided to test it first.
My bat file states:
for /f “delims=” %%I in (test.txt) do echo D| xcopy “C:\Documents and Settings\e1000721\Desktop\New\%%I” “C:\Copy\%%I”
My test.txt file states
Level\test\File1.txt
Level\test\File2.txt
test\File3.txt
test\File4.txt
And it does copy over fine, only when it finishes, the file structure appears as
C:\Copy\Level\test\File1.txt\File2.txt
C:\Copy\Level\test\File2.txt\File2.txt
C:\Copy\test\File3.txt\File3.txt
C:\Copy\test\File4.txt\File4.txt
Any thoughts on how I can get it to not make the last subfolder the name of the file?
Thanks.
Try replacing xcopy with a regular copy command — it might do the trick. (For some reason xcopy is defaulting to behavior assuming that the destination is a directory, not a file. Usually this only happens when the /I switch is present.)
Tried copy and it just bombed out. I then put a pause at the end of the batch file so I could see exactly what it was doing. The issue with the xcopy wound up being that it was set for Directory instead of File so I changed D| to F| before the xcopy thus making the script:
for /f “delims=” %%I in (test.txt) do echo F| xcopy “C:\Documents and Settings\e1000721\Desktop\New\%%I” “C:\Copy\%%I”
Thanks again for the great help.
Thanks Brian! This was exactly what I was trying to do. Years ago I did a lot with DOS batch files and now I can not remember how to do it since dragging and dropping everything.
I modified your example a bit to create a text file listing files, which were not found.
Brian,
You are a genius! I have been trying to do this all night without success and am glad that I found this site. Thank you!!!
Keep up the good work.
David
You’ve saved me sooo much time! “Thank You” can’t begin to explain my gratitude. You’re awesome
Hi,
How I have a problem, the filelist.txt that i’ve created constains different locations (server locations),
\\server1\temp1
\\server2\temp2
\\server3\temp3
Can this be done using your batch file?
thanks,
If your filelist.txt has the full path to the files, you need to do two things:
1. Remove any path prefix to the source parameter of the xcopy command.
2. Remove the first slash in the UNC path in the destination parameter of the xcopy command.
Fortunately the command shell in Windows allows you to specify a substring of characters from a variable (called string indexing, see http://www.dostips.com/DtTipsStringManipulation.php). If the variable %i was your full UNC path, and you want to drop the first character (so you don’t have a double-slash in your path), you can specify %i:~1 — the :~1 says “start from the second character” (strings are zero-indexed, so the first character is at position 0, the second at position 1, etc.).
Your command line can then be:
for /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do ( set fil=%%i
echo D|xcopy “%%i” “c:\temp\%fil:~1%” /i /z /y )
You have to set a temporary variable (“fil” in the above), since as far as I can tell string indexing doesn’t work with the %%i for loop variable.
Nice problem and solution. Can a scripting langugage such as biterscripting make the task easy ? Here is a script.
# Script CopyFiles.txt
var str src, dest, list, file
cat “/path/to/list file.txt” > $list
lex “1″ $list > $file
while ($file “”)
do
system copy (“\”"+$src+”/”+$file) (“\”"+$dest+”/”+$file)
lex “1″ $list > $file
done
This script is in biterscripting ( http://www.biterscripting.com ). Save the script in file C:/Scripts/CopyFiles.txt. Call the script using the following command.
script “C:/Scripts/CopyFiles.txt” src(“/path/to/source folder”) dest(“/path/to/destination folder”)