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Number   :  2823
Date     :  2002-09-19
Author   :  Kan Yabumoto
Subject  :  Re: Full path v wild cards
Size(KB) :  3


Brian:

Sorry, in my last response to your question, I interpreted
your question with "normal.dot" as the directory name.

That is why my response was totally "out of sync" ----
but, the contents were supposed to be useful for readers
with sloppy backslashing habits.

Now, this one is clear that you are trying to copy *ALL*
"normal.dot" files in your E:\ drive and copy them into
the F:\ drive which would create the same paths as needed.

As ALWAYS, I beg everyone who reports strange behaviors
which makes little sense to include the XXCOPY version number
as well as the Windows version the problem is observed.

I have checked the current release version, V.2.82.4
and a few earlier versions (v.2.80.3, v.2.82.3, and
v.2.82.2) with the following commands:

xxcopy c:\*\normal.doc e:\ /wd0 /y
xxcopy c:\*\normal.doc e:\temp\ /wd0 /y

I could not find anything wrong with the program.
XXCOPY found the files in various directories and
made their copies successfully. I tested the above
commands in WinXP-Pro and Win98SE (with both
FAT and NTFS volumes).

In my case, I did not add /H which may be
necessary if the file has the hidden/system file
attributes (or in a hidden/system directory).

At any rate, /wd0 and /y should not change the
behavior.

------------------------------------------------------
Note the /WD0 is necessary to suppress the rare
warning to see if you really mean to run this
operation. The reason for this "seemingly unnecessary"
warning is quite necessary in the majority of cases.
This command is to copy the root directory with a
filename pattern to the destination. In most such
cases are a result of user mistyping.

That is, when you type

xxcopy c:\windowz e:\windows\ /s

XXCOPY would interpret this as a operation which
copies all files named "windowz" in every directory
in the volume when a "windowz" is not a directory
that already exist in the root directory. And,
if you had an /E switch, you will find *EVERY*
subdirectories in the C:\ volume will be duplicated
in the destination directory (and probably all of
them are empty).

Again, as I said earlier, the trailing backslash
to a directory name would prevent this "wrong"
interpretation if the name was indeed the name of a
directory.

In, Brian's case, it is a rare case where the user
intends the name to be a filename pattern.
The /WD0 switch will make the user intention clear.
-------------------------------------------------------

Just in case, let me add a funny case that I observed.
When I was testing the funny behavior that you reported,
I actually saw the "same" thing as you reported.
Then, the mystery was resolved when I realized that
I was typing "normal.doc" rather than "normal.dot" :-)
It was a simple mistyping. I guess my fingers are
so much more used to type .doc than .dot 
I just hope this was not the case for you...

I can't imagine you are repeatedly typing wrong and
report this to us. So, the only remaining scenario
is that you may be using a very old version of XXCOPY
where we had a lot of problems with the "root-directory"
handling everywhere due to some unexpected non-uniform
behavior of Windows OS.

Kan Yabumoto
======================================================
At 2002-09-19 07:28, you wrote:
>If I copy the file "e:\downloads and settings\brian phillips\application
>data\microsoft\templates\normal.dot" (which is the file where Word
>stores some of its options) specifying the file's full path with xxcopy
>then copying proceeds in the expected manner. However, if I use the
>instruction -
>
>xxcopy e:\*\normal.dot f:\
>
>then nothing is copied even though a file normal.dot is present
>somewhere.
>
>Any suggestions about what I am doing wrong would be greatly
>appreciated.
>
>Brian



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