Get-ChildItem and Copy-Item explanation

Question

Why does

gci $from -Recurse | copy-item -Destination  $to -Recurse -Force -Container

not behave in the same way as

copy-item $from $to -Recurse -Force

?

I think it should be the same, but somehow it's not. Why?

Leontine

what is the difference? the second script is not copying recursively? here one guy helped me using % foreach to copy all output #17973283 – Sidneysidoma

Answer 1

You are not looping over each item in the collection of files/folders, but passing the last value to the pipe. You need to use Foreach-item or % to the Copy-Item command. From there, you also do not need the second -recurse switch as you already have every item in the GCI.

try this:

gci $from -Recurse | % {copy-item -Path $_ -Destination  $to -Force -Container }

Championship

shouldn't gci $from -Recurse get all files from directory and them pipe thru – Bronchitis

Isn't the copy-item missing a $_? This is not running for me in PS 5.0 The actual command is: gci $from -Recurse | % { copy-item $_ -Destination $to -Force } – Macropterous

You are correct kumar_harsh that I neglected the $_ in my original answer. I've made this slight revisions. – Championship

Answer 2

Here is what worked for me

Get-ChildItem -Path .\ -Recurse -Include *.txt | %{Join-Path -Path $_.Directory -ChildPath $_.Name } | Copy-Item -Destination $to

Aubervilliers

No need to Join-Path, use $_.FullName in Copy-Item instead. – Mormon

Answer 3

This works for me:

Get-ChildItem 'c:\source\' -Recurse | % {Copy-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination 'd:\Dest\' -Force -Container }

Agribusiness

Please include an explanation of why this answers the question. – Aili

perhaps it doesn't directly but might be helpful to those wishing to understand more about the various ways in which you can achieve the same outcome in different ways. – Agribusiness

Answer 4

The switches are wrong. They should be:

gci -Path $from -Recurse | copy-item -Destination  $to -Force -Container

Cutin

Answer 5

To loop all items, this should work:

gci -Path $from -Recurse | % { $_ | copy-item -Destination  $to -Force -Container}

Just do the foreach and pipe each item again.

Palmy