Powershell 2 copy-item which creates a folder if doesn't exist

Question

$from = \"\\\\something\\1 XLS\\2010_04_22\\*\"
$to =  \"c:\\out\\1 XLS\\2010_04_22\\\"
copy-item $from $to -Recurse 

This works if c:\\out\\

Answer 1

function Copy-File ([System.String] $sourceFile, [System.String] $destinationFile, [Switch] $overWrite) {

    if ($sourceFile -notlike "filesystem::*") {
        $sourceFile = "filesystem::$sourceFile" 
    }

    if ($destinationFile -notlike "filesystem::*") {
        $destinationFile = "filesystem::$destinationFile" 
    }

    $destinationFolder = $destinationFile.Replace($destinationFile.Split("\")[-1],"")

    if (!(Test-Path -path $destinationFolder)) {
        New-Item $destinationFolder -Type Directory
    }

    try {
        Copy-Item -Path $sourceFile -Destination $destinationFile -Recurse -Force
        Return $true 
    } catch [System.IO.IOException] {
        # If overwrite enabled, then delete the item from the destination, and try again:
        if ($overWrite) {
            try {
                Remove-Item -Path $destinationFile -Recurse -Force        
                Copy-Item -Path $sourceFile -Destination $destinationFile -Recurse -Force 
                Return $true
            } catch {
                Write-Error -Message "[Copy-File] Overwrite error occurred!`n$_" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
                #$PSCmdlet.WriteError($Global:Error[0])
                Return $false
            }
        } else {
            Write-Error -Message "[Copy-File] File already exists!" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
            #$PSCmdlet.WriteError($Global:Error[0])
            Return $false
        }
    } catch {
        Write-Error -Message "[Copy-File] File move failed!`n$_" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
        #$PSCmdlet.WriteError($Global:Error[0]) 
        Return $false
    } 
}

Answer 2

In PowerShell 2.0, it is still not possible to get the Copy-Item cmdlet to create the destination folder, you'll need code like this:

$destinationFolder = "C:\My Stuff\Subdir"

if (!(Test-Path -path $destinationFolder)) {New-Item $destinationFolder -Type Directory}
Copy-Item "\\server1\Upgrade.exe" -Destination $destinationFolder

If you use -Recurse in the Copy-Item it will create all the subfolders of the source structure in the destination but it won't create the actual destination folder, even with -Force.

Answer 3

My favorite is to use the .Net [IO.DirectoryInfo] class, which takes care of some of the logic. I actually use this for a lot of similar scripting challenges. It has a .Create() method that creates directories that don't exist, without errors if they do.

Since this is still a two step problem, I use the foreach alias to keep it simple. For single files:

[IO.DirectoryInfo]$to |% {$_.create(); cp $from $_}

As far as your multi file/directory match, I would use RoboCopy over xcopy. Remove the "*" from your from and just use:

RoboCopy.exe $from $to *

You can still add the /r (Recurse), /e (Recurse including Empty), and there are 50 other useful switches.

Edit: Looking back at this it is terse, but not very readable if you are not using the code often. Usually I have it split into two, like so:

([IO.DirectoryInfo]$to).Create()
cp $from $to

Also, DirectoryInfo is the type of the Parent property of FileInfo, so if your $to is a file, you can use them together:

([IO.FileInfo]$to).Parent.Create()
cp $from $to