CMD/Powershell: Copy files with partial path wildcards

Question

I want to implement the following functionality using either the Windows Command Prompt, Powershell, or a combination of the two:

Suppose we are given a source directory, sourcedir and a destination directory destinationdir, and we want to copy files, recursively, from the source to the destination.

We are also given a wildcard filter like so */foo/bar/*; the filter means find all files in sourcedir that contain /foo/bar/ anywhere in its path. For instance, sourcedir/foo/bar/file1.txt, and sourcedir/baz/foo/bar/file2.txt will be copied, while sourcedir/foo/baz/bar/file3.txt will not be copied.

Choose a language then think about how it might do it, try a few things, then post problems you are having to one of the groups. — Noodles
– Noodles, Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 6:15
??? it's a requirement for a task I'm doing at work and the whole thing is hung up on this step. I've tried a few approaches involving Get-ChildItem and Where-Object, neither have really worked. — Freddy L.
– Freddy L., Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 6:27
Actually, the root of the problem is neither Command Prompt or Powershell seem to support the regular **/ partial path wildcard — Freddy L.
– Freddy L., Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 6:30

Freddy L. · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-14 06:43:04Z

1

Right, figured this out with a bunch of random stuff. Turns out */foo/bar/* partial path does work in Get-ChildItem:

Get-ChildItem -Path "$($sourcedir)\$($filter)" -Recurse | Copy-Item -Destination $destinationdir

answered Mar 14, 2019 at 6:43

Freddy L.

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Theo Over a year ago

May I suggest you start using either PowerShell Join-Path or .Net [[System.IO.Path]::Combine()](learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/…) to concatenate file paths. Using either will ensure the path you construct is syntactically correct. (you don't 'miss' a backslash by mistake)

eavom · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-20 21:09:02Z

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You can try this

copy-Item $SourceDir $DestinationDir -recurse

edited Sep 20, 2020 at 21:09

eavom

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answered Sep 20, 2020 at 9:53

TedmondInRedmond

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JayB Over a year ago

This worked smoothly for me and is the simplest solution here. I simply put the full paths starting from the root and used wildcards in the source path as needed. Thanks!

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