Robocopy is a powerful command-line tool developed by Microsoft for synchronizing and copying files and directories between various locations. It offers several advantages over other file copying methods, including the ability to handle special characters in file names, maintaining file attributes, and dealing with large file sizes. In this article, we'll focus on using Robocopy to copy files with special characters in their names.
Understanding Robocopy
Robocopy is a versatile tool that can be used for various purposes, such as:
- Backup and restore
- Migrating data to a new server
- Synchronizing files between different locations
- Automating file transfers
Robocopy Syntax
The basic syntax for using Robocopy is:
robocopy source destination [options]
Here, source is the starting location, and destination is the target location. The options parameter includes various switches that control the behavior of Robocopy.
Copying Files with Special Characters
When copying files with special characters in their names using standard copy methods, you might encounter issues. However, Robocopy can handle such situations with ease. To illustrate this, let's consider an example:
robocopy "C:\Source\folder\New file.1.3mxyz.jpg" "D:\Destination\folder\New file.1.3mxyz.jpg" /S /DCOPY:T /Z
In this example, we're copying a file named "New file.1.3mxyz.jpg" from the source folder to the destination folder using the /S switch to copy subdirectories and files recursively, /DCOPY:T switch to copy file timestamps, and /Z switch to copy empty directories.
Robocopy Switches for Special Characters
Robocopy offers several switches to handle special characters:
/FFT: Force the use of Unicode file times./D:Copy directories, including empty ones./Sand/E: Copy subdirectories and files recursively./NP: Do not create empty directories./NJH: Do not display the progress bar.
Robocopy Example with Special Characters
Let's examine an example where we search for files with special characters and copy them:
robocopy "C:\Source\folder" "D:\Destination\folder" /S /DCOPY:T /Z /NP /R:1 /W:5 /F *.*mdaft* *.*mguy* *.*mxyz*
In this example, we're searching for files with the extensions "mdaft," "mguy," and "mxyz" in the source folder and copying them to the destination folder using the /NP switch to prevent creating empty directories, /R:1 switch to pause and prompt for confirmation before copying each file, and /W:5 switch to wait 5 seconds before terminating the operation if no files are copied.