sides of march (Brian DeMarzo)

Thoughts on life, liberty, and information technology

Using the FOR command to copy files listed in a text file

30.3.2004

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.

146 responses to “Using the FOR command to copy files listed in a text file”

Happy Guy

2008.02.21

Thanks Brian for this nice solution. It saved a lot of time for us 🙂

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Joe

2008.05.30

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.

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brian

2008.05.30

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.

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Joe

2008.05.31

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?

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1. Brett
  
  2014.07.09
  
  Modify the following excerpt of code:
  echo D|xcopy
  
  To the following:
  echo F|xcopy
  
  XCOPY prompts the user to either copy F, file, or D, directory. When changed from D to F, the batch script was able to successfully copy only the photos files to the directory, without placing each photo in a self named directory.
  
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brian

2008.06.05

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”

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Manuel

2008.07.22

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

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brian

2008.07.22

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.

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Manuel

2008.07.23

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

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brian

2008.07.23

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 /s

The 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 /s

This 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.log C:\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.log C:\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!

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Manuel

2008.07.23

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

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Manuel

2008.08.02

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

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brian

2008.08.04

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. 😀

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1. Ren
  
  2017.03.29
  
  Hello Brian,
  If i want to move/cut the files and not copy, what command should i use.
  PS. i tried, “move” but didn’t work.
  
  Thanks,
  Ren
  
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Josh

2008.11.11

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.

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brian

2008.11.11

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.)

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Josh

2008.11.12

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.

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Sari

2008.12.18

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.

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David Lim

2009.07.13

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

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Joel Eade

2009.07.21

You’ve saved me sooo much time! “Thank You” can’t begin to explain my gratitude. You’re awesome 🙂

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Lester

2010.01.04

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,

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brian

2010.01.14

If your filelist.txt has the full path to the files, you need to do two things:

Remove any path prefix to the source parameter of the xcopy command.
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.

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PatrickMc

2010.01.26

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”)

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Adrian

2011.06.27

Thank you very much for such a useful script, i’ve been looking for it for 2 days, but i have a problem

in my filelist.txt i have listed a lot of files with special characters, like á é í ó ú so it keeps telling

me file not found because it cannot read any of those characters, is there any way to fix this problem?

i really need to get over this, i have like 10 files listing me 200 files each one, it would take me

years to do it manually :S

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Gayatri Prabakar

2012.04.20

Thanks a lot, brian!!! 🙂

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Sony

2012.09.18

Hi Brian,
I need ur help very urgently.

I have a text file which contains list of folders and files I want to copy to another location. Those folders r in different drives like C: and D:.
My text file content gos something like this.
C:\Folder1
D:\Test2
C:\mytext.txt

Can u please give me the script that copies these folders along with their subfolders and contents to another location??

I have tried many. One of those is :
for /f “delims=” %i in (D:\includelist.txt) do xcopy “%i\” “U:\BACKUP\” /i /z /y /s /e

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brian

2012.09.25

First, I would specify U:\BACKUP\%i
Second, if you are running the script from the command line, you need to double the percent signs.
Third, if some of the source files are folders, and some are files, you need to be careful with your backslashes.
Fourth, what error are you getting?

Try this:
for /f “delims=” %%i in (D:\includelist.txt) do xcopy “%%i” “U:\BACKUP\%%i” /i /z /y /s /e

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1. Sony
  
  2012.10.23
  
  The script that u mentioned copies only subfolders. My includelist is something like this :
  D:\Sample\Test
  C:\NewFolder\Test1
  
  When i run the script it copies only Test and Test1 in U:\BackUp. The Entire folder structure is not created. Please help me with this.
  I tried the following : for /f “delims=” %i in (D:\includelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “D:\%i” “U:\BACKUP\%i:~1%” /i /z /y. This works well.
  But this has D:\ in the source. I do not want that. I read the complete path in %%i.
  
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Damian Stalls

2012.10.16

This is AWESOME!! But I am having a similar problem as Sony. My list.txt file contains the full source path (as there could be multiple drive sources). Is there a way to make the destination of the batch file ignore the drive letter for the destination?

EXAMPLE OF FILELIST.TXT
c:\users\damian.home\appdata\local\microsoft\outlook\damian@m.com.pst
c:\users\damian.home\appdata\local\microsoft\outlook\MailStore Offline.pst

BATCH FILE

for /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “%%i” “D:\PSTs\%%i” /i /z /y

The source works fine but the destination tries to copy to “D:\PST\C:\USERS…”. Actually if the destination could just drop the “:” that would be PERFECT!

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1. Damian Stalls
  
  2012.10.17
  
  Nevermind… i finally figured it out. The example you provided needed some extra quotes when setting the fil variable, and the substrings needed to be updated:
  
  for /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do ( set “fil=%%i”
  echo D|xcopy “%%i” “D:\DESTINATION\%fil:~0,1%%fil:~2%” /i /z /y )
  
  This copy the source file as follows:
  C:\Folder1\file.nam –> D:\DESTINATION\C\Folder1\file.nam
  E:\Folder3\file1.nam –> D:\DESTINATION\E\Folder3\file1.nam
  
  YEAH!
  
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  1. Sony
    
    2012.10.23
    
    Heyy Damian,
    
    I tried ur script. But it doesnt work. it created a folder named “~0,1%fil” in U:\Backup. It copied only 2 files from the entire folder.
    
    I just need to truncate the drive D:\ name from destination path. Can u please look into that?
    
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Damian Stalls

2012.10.17

Spoke too soon… if you execute the batch file from a command line it works. If you double click on the batch file it does not! Any ideas?

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W Noel

2012.12.10

Hey Brian,

Thanks for such amazing information!

I want to create the scenario Manuel was asking about:

Some files are in multiple SubDirectories and I have the file names in a text file (file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf)

I want all locations of the same file recreated when applicable.

Ex:

e:\SourceFolder\SubDir1\SubDir1A\file1.pdf
e:\SourceFolder\SubDir2\SubDir2A\file2.pdf
e:\SourceFolder\SibDir3\SubDir3A\file3.pdf
e:\SourceFolder\SubDir4\SubDir4A\file3.pdf

becomes

e:\DestFolder\SubDir1\SubDir1A\file1.pdf
e:\DestFolder\SubDir2\SubDir2A\file2.pdf
e:\DestFolder\SibDir3\SubDir3A\file3.pdf
e:\DestFolder\SubDir4\SubDir4A\file3.pdf

…Where file3.pdf was found in two locations and placed in both trees.

So far, I keep getting a directory created with the file name like follows:

e:\DestFolder\file1.pdf\SubDir1\SubDir1A\file1.pdf
e:\DestFolder\file2.pdf\SubDir2\SubDir2A\file2.pdf
e:\DestFolder\file3.pdf\SibDir3\SubDir3A\file3.pdf
e:\DestFolder\file3.pdf\SubDir4\SubDir4A\file3.pdf

…Where fileX.pdf folders are created and file3.pdf is in its appropriate tree but both under a file3.pdf subdirectory and

I’ve tried:

do echo D|xcopy
do echo F|xcopy
do xcopy

and I’m not getting the result I want yet.

I hope that all makes sense : )

Any thoughts?

Thanks, Brian!

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vinny

2013.02.25

set src_folder=C:\Users\Vinny\Desktop\Scorpio\Catalog 2013
set dst_folder=C:\Users\Vinny\Desktop\Scorpio\Catalog 2013\catalogimages\
for /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “C:\Users\Vinny\Desktop\Scorpio\Catalog 2013\%%i” “C:\Users\Vinny\Desktop\Scorpio\Catalog 2013\catalogimages\%%i” /i /z /y

i am using this and its putting the images into folders inside the catalog images folder i cannot figure out why. someone had this issue further up but didnt reply with his fix.

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brian

2013.02.25

You for command looks fine (and the set command aren’t needed as you are not using the variables you are setting).

I just tried this by doing the following:

Batch file:
for /f “delims=” %%i in (c:\temp\filelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “C:\temp\%%i” “C:\temp\output\%%i” /i /z /y

FileList.txt file:
restoredb.bat
restoredb.sql

The result was the restoredb.bat and restoredb.sql files, both of which originally existed in the source folder (c:\temp), were copied to the destination folder (c:\temp\output).

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vinny

2013.02.25

ok i dont know anything about this stuff. so i guess i have to find a completely new way to do this because this command is not working. i cant have all of them moved into there own folders and thats whats happening.

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vinny

2013.02.25

for /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “C:\Users\Vinny\Desktop\Scorpio\Catalog 2013\%%i” “C:\Users\Vinny\Desktop\Scorpio\Catalog 2013\catalogimages” /i /z /y

thats what did the trick

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Bal

2013.02.28

Hello,
My filelist.txt has a list of files that are seperated into sections.

filelist.txt e.g.
Section 1
file1
file2
file3

section 2
file4
file5
file6

Is there a way to only copy the files in section 2?

this is the command I am using but it copies all the files in listed in filelist.txt

for /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “C:\test\%%i” “C:\test2” /i /z /y
Pls can you help?

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Mike

2013.03.05

What if I just want to copy the files in the filelist.txt source into a single destination directory, ignoring what subfolders they originated in?

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brian

2013.03.05

@Mike — the easiest way to do this is, assuming your filelist.txt has a list of files with path names:

for /f “delims=” %%i in (c:\temp\filelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “%%i” “C:\temp\output\%%i%~nxf” /i /z /y

That may work, I didn’t try it. The tilde in the variable is part of ‘variable substitution’ in the command shell. See http://superuser.com/questions/489240/how-to-get-filename-only-without-path-in-windows-command-line

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Alex

2013.03.12

Hi Brian,

Can you please guide me for the below query –

I want to move files from one folder location to a temp location with conditions as below
1) All the files lesses than sysdate
2. After files are copied to temp location it should be zipped.
3. Again I have to copy these zip file to a different location and than unzip it.

Please help … Appreciate ur swift response!

Regards!

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Kirke

2013.03.26

Hi Brain,

Are you getting payed for all this work?
I just read through the whole tread, and it seems you are the only contributer to actual solutions…..

What I read is very usfull, but I can’t figure out how to seach the files from the list in subfolders.
Is this even possible?

I used this:

For /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do xcopy “c:\Temp\%%i?” “c:\Final” /i /z /y /s

and it woorks great if all files are located in c:\temp\

But the files I am looking for is in subfolders to c:\temp\

Hope you yet again can come with a solution 🙂

Best regards

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Kirke

2013.03.26

jesus just tried it out another time and it works…..you really are the man Brain, you should get payed for this….

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brian

2013.04.08

@Kirke — thanks for the kudos, and glad you got it working. Batch files are a labor of love… 🙂

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Adeya

2013.04.29

Hello, Brian!
1. I’m beginner. Though cases discussed on your site are very similar to that what I need, still I can’t get the solution.
2. My case:
2.1. I have a folder C:\temp with, say, 3 Excel files Name1.xlsx, Name2.xlsx, Name3.xlsx
2.2. I have FileList.txt file in C:\temp folder. File contains:
Name2.xlsx
Name3.xlsx
2.3. I need to move files Name2.xlsx and Name3.xlsx, as defined in FileList.txt, from the folder C:\temp into the folder C:\temp\new

PS. An advantage of vehicle with manual gear compare to the one with automatic is that in case of manual gear I can start the engine from the push. I am looking you to push me. Thank You.

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Adeya

2013.04.30

My OS is WINDOWS 7.

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brian

2013.04.30

Use the same command line, just change the source path and use MOVE instead of XCOPY.

for /f “delims=” %i in (filelist.txt) do move /y “c:\temp\%i” “c:\temp\new\%i”

Important note — if you put this in a batch file, you need to use %%i; if you run it directly from a command prompt, you use %i.

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Adeya

2013.04.30

This batch file:
for /f “delims=” %%i in (C:\temp_ad\filelist.txt) do echo D|xcopy “C:\temp_ad\%%i” “C:\temp_ad\output\%%i” /i /z /y

works neither in Win XP nor WINDOWS 7. Folder \output\ remains empty.
Batch file resides in temp_ad folder.
filelist.txt looks as follows:
Name2.xlsx
Name3.xlsx
Hope on your help.
Thanks.

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brian

2013.04.30

What is the output when you run just this from the console (not a batch file)?

for /f "delims=" %i in (C:\temp_ad\filelist.txt) do echo xcopy "C:\temp_ad\%i" "C:\temp_ad\output\%i" /i /z /y
Remember to make quotes normal quotes; I think WordPress is replacing them with curly quotes when the comment is posed.

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Adeya

2013.04.30

The problem was the quotes: they were not normal.

Here is working version.

@ECHO OFF
cd C:\temp_ad
for /f “delims=” %%i in (filelist.txt) do move /y “C:\temp_ad\%%i” “C:\temp_ad\output\%%i”
@ECHO OFF

Brian, you gave me a push, thank You, though I am not sure how long my ‘engine’ will work, maybe I will need another push:) Thanks a lot.

Another small question: is it possible to WinZip the files? I wrote batch to unzip it, but how to zip?
Highly appreciate your help.
Adeya
Thank you.

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brian

2013.05.07

@Adeya — funny you ask about zipping the files, I recently wrote a batch file to zip (using 7zip) a folder. Expect a blog post soon.

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andy

2013.05.20

Hi Brian!

i’m in need of a little help here please, been going round and round with this to no avail!! 😦

The goal of this batch is to copy files from a server to a local PC, scheduled to run every 30 minutes, to copy each project’s image folder and copy to a local PC.

I have a set of text files, all with random names i.e. 154799.txt in a single folder, the contents of each file is a single line with a UNC path \server_name\folder\user\jobname (each of these paths contain image files)
I need to use the contents of each text file as a path for a robocopy command
There is an unknown number of *.txt files each with random name, so this needs to run once for each ‘new’ textfile.

I have this batch that generates a list of the filenames and outputs into a single text file called files_list.txt file

for %%a in (*.txt) do echo %%a >> \server_name\folder\user\file_list\files_list.txt

for /F “tokens=*” %%g in (files_list.txt) DO @echo %%g

That produces a file_list.txt with contents:
154799.txt
123456.txt
254874.txt

Where I’m stumped is getting the next batch to take each line of the files_list.txt as a source path

for /f “delims=” %%i in (file_list.txt) do robocopy “%%i” c:\copy\server_footage\ /s /e

Any help greatly appreciated! Thanks, Andy!

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andy

2013.05.20

last line has a typo it should be files_list.txt not file_list.txt!
for /f “delims=” %%i in (files_list.txt) do robocopy “%%i” c:\copy\server_footage\ /s /e
😐

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brian

2013.05.20

Two things that could be throwing you off:

Use “delims= ” — that is, use a space as a delimiter. This solved a problem for me in eliminating white space at the end of the filename.
You need three loops. Think of it this way:

LOOP 1 — get the filename of all text files (*.txt) and put it in a new file (files_list.txt)
LOOP 2 — go through files_list.txt, and for each line (i.e. each file, do LOOP 3
LOOP 3 — called by loop 2, this reads each line in the file and does the robocopy

Your LOOP2 and LOOP3 have to be in the same command, something like this:

for /f “delims= ” %%i in (c:\temp\files_list.txt) do for /f “delims= ” %%j in (%i) do robocopy “%%j” c:\temp
\destination\ /s /e

Hope that helps!

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andy

2013.05.23

Yep, that’s got it! the for / do needed to be in the same command!

Thanks Brian! 🙂

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1. andy
  
  2013.06.27
  
  Hi Brian,
  
  I have another change I would like to implement:
  Deleting the 154799.txt file if there is no new data (changes/updated/new files) within the source folder
  
  using the errorlevel check from Robocopy
  errorlevel 0 echo No Change & goto remove
  remove then deletes 154799.txt and all other *.txt files but I can’t seem to find a way to split this out of the original variable in Loop 3.
  It acts only on the last *.txt file it reads, so if there is no change to that, it deletes all *.txt, even if the preceding files had new or changed content.
  
  Section of script contains:
  
  call :REPORT_ERRORLEVEL
  goto :EOF
  
  :REPORT_ERRORLEVEL
  echo.
  
  if errorlevel 16 echo FATAL ERROR & goto end
  if errorlevel 15 echo OKCOPY + FAIL + MISMATCHES + XTRA & goto end
  if errorlevel 14 echo FAIL + MISMATCHES + XTRA & goto end
  if errorlevel 13 echo OKCOPY + FAIL + MISMATCHES & goto end
  if errorlevel 12 echo FAIL + MISMATCHES& goto end
  if errorlevel 11 echo OKCOPY + FAIL + XTRA & goto end
  if errorlevel 10 echo FAIL + XTRA & goto end
  if errorlevel 9 echo OKCOPY + FAIL & goto end
  if errorlevel 8 echo FAIL & goto end
  if errorlevel 7 echo OKCOPY + MISMATCHES + XTRA & goto end
  if errorlevel 6 echo MISMATCHES + XTRA & goto end
  if errorlevel 5 echo OKCOPY + MISMATCHES & goto end
  if errorlevel 4 echo MISMATCHES & goto end
  if errorlevel 3 echo OKCOPY + XTRA & goto end
  if errorlevel 2 echo XTRA & goto end
  if errorlevel 1 echo OKCOPY & goto end
  if errorlevel 0 echo No Change & goto remove
  
  :remove
  for /f %%a in (\server_name\folder\copy_dir\file_list\job_list.txt) do del %%a
  :end
  
  Any suggestions please? Thanks!
  
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