Stuart McLachlan
stuart at lexacorp.com.pg
Thu Aug 28 08:32:05 CDT 2003
On 28 Aug 2003 at 13:37, Jon Tydda wrote: > John > > That's inspired... What do all the individual switches mean? I've only got a > vague memory of DOS I'm afraid :-) > RTFM :-) >From W2K Help: Xcopy Copies files and directories, including subdirectories. xcopy source [destination] [/w] [/p] [/c] [/v] [/q] [/f] [/l] [/d[:date]] [/u] [/i] [/s [/e]] [/t] [/k] [/r] [/h] [/a|/m] [/n] [/exclude:filename] [/y | /-y] [/z] Parameters source Specifies the location and names of the files you want to copy. This parameter must include either a drive or a path. destination Specifies the destination of the files you want to copy. This parameter can include a drive letter and colon, a directory name, a file name, or a combination. /w Displays the following message and waits for your response before starting to copy files: Press any key to begin copying file(s) /p Prompts you to confirm whether you want to create each destination file. /c Ignores errors. /v Verifies each file as it is written to the destination file to make sure that the destination files are identical to the source files. This switch is ignored because the functionality is inherent to the Windows 2000 operating system. The switch is accepted only for compatibility with previous versions of MS-DOS. /q Suppresses display of xcopy messages. /f Displays source and destination file names while copying. /l Does not copy files, only displays (lists) files that would be copied. /d[:date] Copies only source files changed on or after the specified date. If the date value is missing, xcopy copies all source files that are newer than the time of existing destination files. This option allows you to update only files that have changed. If you specify a date, use a hyphen (-) as the separator rather than a forward slash (/) so that the date is not interpreted as another parameter. /u Copies (updates) only files from source that exist on destination. /i If source is a directory or contains wildcards, and destination does not exist, xcopy assumes destination specifies a directory name and creates a new directory then copies all specified files into the new directory. By default, xcopy will prompt you to specify whether destination is a file or directory. /s Copies directories and subdirectories, unless they are empty. If you omit this switch, xcopy works within a single directory. /e Copies all subdirectories, even if they are empty. Used with the /s and /t switches. /t Copies only subdirectory structure (tree), not files. To copy empty directories, you must include the /e switch. /k Copies files and retains the read-only attribute on destination files if present on the source files. By default, the read-only attribute is removed. /r Copies over read-only files. /h Copies files with the hidden and system file attributes. The xcopy command does not copy hidden or system files by default. /a Copies only source files that have their archive file attributes set. This switch does not modify the archive file attribute of the source file. For information about how to set the archive file attribute, see the attrib command. /m Copies source files that have their archive file attributes set. Unlike the /a switch, the /m switch turns off archive file attributes in the files specified in source. For information about how to set the archive file attribute, click attrib in the Related Topics list[JG1]. /n Copies using NTFS short file or directory names. This switch is required when copying files or directories from an NTFS volume to a FAT volume or when the FAT file system naming convention (8.3) is required on the destination volume. The destination file system may be FAT or NTFS. /exclude:filename Excludes the files listed in the specified file from the copy operation. The exclusion file can have a list of exclusion patterns (one per line, no wildcard characters are supported). If any exclusion pattern in the file matches any part of the path of a subject file, that file is not copied. /y Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing destination file. The /y switch may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable. This may be overridden with /-y on the command line. The default is to prompt on overwrites unless the copy command is being executed from within a batch script. To append files, specify a single file for destination, but multiple files for source (using wildcards or file1+file2+file3 format). /-y Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing destination file. /z Copies over a network in restartable mode. If the connection is lost during the copy phase (for example, if the server going offline severs the connection), it will resume after the connection has been re-established. Using this command switch also displays the percentage of the copy operation completed for each file. -- Lexacorp Ltd http://www.lexacorp.com.pg Information Technology Consultancy, Software Development,System Support.