Is there a way to use the "Copy" command in Powershell to copy a source file to a destination folder but not lock the actual file being copied?
Reason for asking is the file being copied is also an input file for a separate process and if the process starts while the Powershell script is running then it will fail if the Powershell script has locked the input file it uses.
Related
I use the video transcoding tools made by Don Melton over on GitHub to compress self filmed videos. Now I would like to automate this task by using a PowerShell script to loop over the contents of a folder as input arguments for the tool and have the output put into a seperate folder. My problem is that the tool is written in a way that it has no option to provide an output location, instead it always places the output files in the directory where it is called in. So when I cd into an "output" directory "next to" the one where my input files are, I then can call
other-transcode ../input/file.mp4
and the output file of the same name as the input file will be placed in the output directory.
Now when I want to use the command in a script, how do I tell PowerShell to run the command as if it was typed manually into a shell that was in the output directory at the moment?
For context, this is my end goal, but I think it is easier to split the complicated question into multiple ones.
I have a powershell script that generates a report, and I have connected it to an io.filesystemwatcher. I am trying to improve the error handling capability. I already have the report generation function (which only takes in a filepath) within a try-catch loop that basically kills word, excel and powerpoint and tries again if it fails. This seems to work well but I want to embed in that another try-catch loop that will restart the computer and generate the report after reboot if it fails a second consecutive time.
I decided to try and modify the registry after reading this article: https://cmatskas.com/configure-a-runonce-task-on-windows/
my plan would be, within the second try-catch loop I will create a textfile called RecoveredPath.txt with the file path being its only contents, and then add something like:
Set-ItemProperty "HKLMU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce" -Name '!RecoverReport' -Value "C:\...EmergencyRecovery.bat"
Before rebooting. Within the batch file I have:
set /p RecoveredDir=<RecoveredPath.txt
powershell.exe -File C:\...Report.ps1 %RecoveredDir%
When I try to run the batch script, it doesn't yield any errors but doesn't seem to do anything. I tried adding in an echo statement and it is storing the value of the text file as a variable but doesn't seem to be passing it to powershell correctly. I also tried adding -Path %RecoveredDir% but that yielded an error (the param in report.ps1 is named $Path).
What am I doing incorrectly?
One potential problem is that not enclosing %RecoveredDir% in "..." would break with paths containing spaces and other special chars.
However, the bigger problem is that using mere file name RecoveredPath.txt means that the file is looked for in whatever the current directory happens to be.
In a comment your state that both the batch file and input file RecoveredPath.txt are located in your desktop folder.
However, it is not the batch file's location that matters, it's the process' current directory - and that is most likely not your desktop when your batch file auto-runs on startup.
Given that the batch file and the input file are in the same folder and that you can refer to a batch file's full folder path with %~dp0 (which includes a trailing \), modify your batch file to look as follows:
set /p RecoveredDir=<"%~dp0RecoveredPath.txt"
powershell.exe -File C:\...Report.ps1 "%RecoveredDir%"
I have some files which I would like to be able to archive daily into a zip file that has the date in the filename.
The files to be archived are in one folder, let's call them a, b and c.
I would like them to be zipped into a file with the name archiveYYYYMMDD.zip into a second (different) folder where YYYYMMDD is the current date. I'm struggling to come up with a suitable batch file.
I'm running Windows 7 x64 Ultimate. I have a scheduling program which would run the batch file at a preset time every day.
Thanks
Alan
This can be done with shareware archiver WinRAR with a single command line:
"%ProgramFiles%\WinRAR\WinRAR.exe" a -afzip -agYYYYMMDD -cfg- -ed -ep1 -ibck -inul -m5 -r -y -- "Path to Backup Folder\Backup_.zip" "Path to Folder to Backup\"
This single command line can be executed directly as scheduled task. There is no need for a batch file.
The help of WinRAR opened by starting WinRAR and clicking in menu Help on menu item Help topics explains under Contents menu item Command line mode the command line syntax, the command a and the used switches.
I am currently trying to write a batch program that installs a module named SetConsolePath.psm1 at the correct location. I am a beginner with Batch and I have absolutely no powershell experience.
Through the internet, I have learned how to display PSModulePath with powershell -command "echo $env:PSModulePath.
How can I, via .bat file, move SetConsolePath.psm1 from the desktop to the location displayed by powershell -command "echo $env:PSModulePath?
Thank you in advance, and I apologize for my lack of experience.
Before I answer, I must out that you do not want to copy PowerShell module files directly to the path pointed by PsModulePath. You really want to create a folder inside PSModulePath and copy the files there instead.
The prefix env in a Powershell variable indicates an environment variable. $env:PSModulePath is actually referring to the PSMODULEPATH environment variable. On the command line, and in batch files, environment variables can be displayed by placing the name between percent symbols. (In fact, you could have displayed this value by typing echo %PSMODULEPATH% instead.)
To reference the desktop folder, have a look at this answer, which shows you how to use another environment variable, USERPROFILE.
Therefore, to copy the file from the desktop directory to the path specified in PSModulePath, you would do this:
COPY "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\SetConsolePath.psm1" "%PSMODULEPATH%"
And, as I warned earlier, you really should copy the file to a folder underneath PsModulePath. So what you really want is:
IF NOT EXIST "%PSMODULEPATH%\MyNewFolder" MKDIR "%PSMODULEPATH%\MyNewFolder"
COPY "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\SetConsolePath.psm1" "%PSMODULEPATH%\MyNewFolder"
I need to write a batch file that copies a file to a new folder and renames it.
At the moment, my batch file consists of only this command:
COPY ABC.PDF \\Documents
As you can see, it only copies the file ABC.pdf to the network folder Documents.
However I need to change this so it renames the file ABCxxx.pdf, where xxx is a text variable that I would like to set somewhere in the batch file.
For example, if xxx = _Draft, then file would be renamed ABC_Draft.pdf after it is copied.
Make a bat file with the following in it:
copy /y C:\temp\log1k.txt C:\temp\log1k_copied.txt
However, I think there are issues if there are spaces in your directory names. Notice this was copied to the same directory, but that doesn't matter. If you want to see how it runs, make another bat file that calls the first and outputs to a log:
C:\temp\test.bat > C:\temp\test.log
(assuming the first bat file was called test.bat and was located in that directory)
type C:\temp\test.bat>C:\temp\test.log