Assist with batch file that searches and xcopy hidden file to specific dir - powershell

Question

It's annoying to manually always search in the CMD and xcopy the hidden file, can someone whos good in scipting help me out?
I use these 2 commands:
Firstly i open CMD in the FOLDER2 and entering this command to find the hidden file in the hidden random sub dir:
dir /s /b | find "robotknow"
(robotknow is not the fullname of the file, only part of it.)
And then when it find the hidden file within the random made subdir i copy the whole path including the whole filename with the ending.
Xcopy /h *The whole path including the filename and ending* C:\hello
My folders:
$sourceDir = 'C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Packages\FOLDER1\FOLDER2'
$targetDir = 'C:\hello'
So i wish to create a batch that could search that string "robotknow" and copy the fullname of the file to my tagetdir.
Is it possible?
Im trying to learn commands but batching is harder, if i was unclear on anything please ask me thank you!
Edit:
I found few commands that could be useful but I dont know how to use them so that it works.
$searchStrings = For it to search after the string above i mentioned: "robotknow"
And
Copy-Item $_.FullName $targetpath
An example would be:
The filename has this in it's name "robotknow" and i want to copy it.
Copy the file im searching after to copy thats within the sub folder of the FOLDER2 which is an hidden random folder that i cannot se:
%LocalAppData%\Packages\FOLDER1\FOLDER2\THE-hidden-RANDOM-made-sub-DIR.
Copy it to it's final directory c:\hello
The final directory, simply just: c:\hello.
By hidden i mean that i cannot see in file explorer, windows GUI and neither if i put this simple command in CMD dir to show the hidden random folder where the file is located in, they are not showing.
The file only appears in CMD if i enter this command dir /s /b | find "robotknow" when im in the FOLDER2.
Only after that i can se the hidden random made dir/folder and the full hidden path to it (the file).

Answer 1

I suggest following batch file code for this task:
#echo off
setlocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion
set "SourceFolder=%LocalAppData%\Packages\FOLDER1\FOLDER2"
set "TargetFolder=C:\hello"
for /F "delims=" %%I in ('dir "%SourceFolder%\*robotknow*" /A-D /B /S 2^>nul') do %SystemRoot%\System32\xcopy.exe "%%~dpI*" "%TargetFolder%\" /C /E /H /K /Q /R /Y >nul
endlocal
The command FOR with option /F starts a separate command process with cmd.exe /C (more precisely %ComSpec% /C) in background to run the command line:
dir "C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Packages\FOLDER1\FOLDER2\*robotknow*" /A-D /B /S 2>nul
DIR outputs to handle STDOUT of background command process
just the names of all files matching the wildcard pattern *robotknow* because of option /A-D (attribute not directory)
even on file having hidden attribute set because of using option /A and not excluding attribute hidden
in bare format because of option /B
with full qualified path because of option /S
found in specified directory or any subdirectory also because of option /S.
It is possible that DIR does not find any file system entry matching these criteria in which case it outputs an error message to handle STDERR. This error message is suppressed by redirecting it to device NUL.
Read the Microsoft article about Using Command Redirection Operators for an explanation of 2>nul. The redirection operator > must be escaped with caret character ^ on FOR command line to be interpreted as literal character when Windows command interpreter processes this command line before executing command FOR which executes the embedded dir command line with using a separate command process started in background.
FOR with option /F captures all lines output to handle STDOUT of started command process and processes them line by line after started cmd.exe terminated itself.
FOR ignores empty lines which do not occur here. FOR ignores by default also all lines starting with a semicolon because of eol=; is the default for end of line character option. But a full qualified file name consisting of full file path, file name and file extension cannot start with ; and so default end of line option can be kept in this case. FOR splits up the lines by default into substrings with using normal space and horizontal tab character as string delimiters and assigns just first space/tab separated substring to specified loop variable. This line splitting behavior is not wanted here because of file path could contain a space character. For that reason option delims= is used to define an empty list of delimiters which disables the line splitting behavior.
So FOR assigns to specified and case-sensitive interpreted loop variable I the full qualified file name found and output by DIR and runs the command XCOPY.
XCOPY is executed with source being the full qualified path of found file referenced with %%~dpI always ending with a backslash concatenated with wildcard * and destination directory being specified target folder C:\hello.
The appended backslash at end of destination directory path makes it 100% clear for XCOPY that the destination is a directory and not a file which prevents the prompt if destination means a directory or a file. \ at end makes also usage of option /I unnecessary and XCOPY creates the entire destination directory structure if necessary.
The other XCOPY options are for really copying all files including files with hidden attribute set in directory containing the file matching the wildcard pattern *robotknow* with all subdirectories including empty subdirectories to destination directory with keeping attributes including read-only attribute.
For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.
dir /?
echo /?
endlocal /?
set /?
setlocal /?
xcopy /?
See also the list of predefined Windows Environment Variables.