How do i copy files starting with HYPHEN using power shell script...? - powershell

Question

I wrote a PowerShell script that will copy files from one location to another... But few files/documents in my source location were starting with "-" in their names, they couldn't get copied to the destination..bcoz of that hyphen symbol in starting. What change can make my code to ignore the symbol HYPHEN and make my files get copied to my destination location. Files that don't have HYPHEN in starting of their names got copied successfully. I can't replace or remove these hyphen's from the doc name it has to be there and i want to copy them.
This is the code i tried so far.
**$newstreamreader = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader("Z:\RedirectedDesktop\TextDocuments\Hyphen.txt") #MY SOURCE LOCATION THAT HAVE PHYSICAL FILES PATH
$eachlinenumber = 1
while (($readeachline =$newstreamreader.ReadLine()) -ne $null)
{
$string1="Y:\"+$readeachline #LOCATION OF PHYSICAL FILES
if (Test-Path -Path $string1){
$LogFile = "Z:\RedirectedDesktop\LogFileCheckPresent.txt" #GENERATES LOG FILE IF FILE PRESENT PHYSICALLY
$Message = $readeachline+",True";
$Message >> $LogFile;
$string2="Z:\RedirectedDesktop\Sample" #DESTINATION
$string3= Split-Path $readeachline -leaf
$string1=$string1.substring(0,$string1.LastIndexOf('\'))
Write-Host "$string1"
Write-Host "$string2"
Write-Host "$string3"
$execution =robocopy $string1 $string2 $string3;
if($execution -match 'ERROR'){
$execution | out-file "Z:\RedirectedDesktop\test_logerror.txt" -Encoding ascii -Append # CREATES A ERROR LOG FILE IF THERE IS AN ERROR IN COPYING
}
else{
$execution | out-file "\Z:RedirectedDesktop\test_log1.txt" -Encoding ascii -Append # CREATES A TEST LOG FILE IF THERE IS NO ERROR IN COPYING
}
}
else{
$LogFile="Z:\RedirectedDesktop\LogFileCheckNotPresent.txt" #GENERATES LOG FILE IF FILE NOT PRESENT PHYSICALLY
$Message = $readeachline+",False";
$Message >> $LogFile;
}
Write-Host "$eachlinenumber $readeachline"
$eachlinenumber++
}
$newstreamreader.Dispose()**
**
ERROR I GOT **
ERROR : Invalid Parameter #3 : "-2 Quote wired second company india private Limited.msg"
Simple Usage :: ROBOCOPY source destination /MIR
source :: Source Directory (drive:\path or \\server\share\path).
destination :: Destination Dir (drive:\path or \\server\share\path).
/MIR :: Mirror a complete directory tree.
For more usage information run ROBOCOPY /?
**** /MIR can DELETE files as well as copy them !

Answer 1

Your problem is specific to robocopy.exe:
If a directory-path or file-name argument starts with - (HYPHEN-MINUS, U+002D), it is invariably interpreted as an option (such as -MIRROR - RoboCopy accepts / and - interchangeably as option prefixes) - whether that path or name is double-quoted or not.
Workaround:
For the directory path arguments (the first two): Make the paths start with a different character, for which you have two options:
Pass a full file path (which by definition doesn't start with -).
Prepend .\ to a relative path / directory name; e.g.:
For the file name argument (the third one):
There is no direct workaround I'm aware of, only a suboptimal one that runs the risk of false positives:
Replace the initial - with wildcard character ?
While this will match your --prefixed file, it may also match other files, if their name is the same except for the first character.
Applied to your case:
robocopy $string1 $string2 ('?' + $string3.Substring(1))