Copy the entire contents of a directory in C#

Question

I want to copy the entire contents of a directory from one location to another in C#.

There doesn\'t appear to be a way to do this using System.IO class

Answer 1

The code below is microsoft suggestion how-to-copy-directories and it is shared by dear @iato but it just copies sub directories and files of source folder recursively and doesn't copy the source folder it self (like right click -> copy ).

but there is a tricky way below this answer :

private static void DirectoryCopy(string sourceDirName, string destDirName, bool copySubDirs = true)
        {
            // Get the subdirectories for the specified directory.
            DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(sourceDirName);

            if (!dir.Exists)
            {
                throw new DirectoryNotFoundException(
                    "Source directory does not exist or could not be found: "
                    + sourceDirName);
            }

            DirectoryInfo[] dirs = dir.GetDirectories();
            // If the destination directory doesn't exist, create it.
            if (!Directory.Exists(destDirName))
            {
                Directory.CreateDirectory(destDirName);
            }

            // Get the files in the directory and copy them to the new location.
            FileInfo[] files = dir.GetFiles();
            foreach (FileInfo file in files)
            {
                string temppath = Path.Combine(destDirName, file.Name);
                file.CopyTo(temppath, false);
            }

            // If copying subdirectories, copy them and their contents to new location.
            if (copySubDirs)
            {
                foreach (DirectoryInfo subdir in dirs)
                {
                    string temppath = Path.Combine(destDirName, subdir.Name);
                    DirectoryCopy(subdir.FullName, temppath, copySubDirs);
                }
            }
        }

if you want to copy contents of source folder and subfolders recursively you can simply use it like this :

string source = @"J:\source\";
string dest= @"J:\destination\";
DirectoryCopy(source, dest);

but if you want to copy the source directory it self (similar that you have right clicked on source folder and clicked copy then in the destination folder you clicked paste) you should use like this :

 string source = @"J:\source\";
 string dest= @"J:\destination\";
 DirectoryCopy(source, Path.Combine(dest, new DirectoryInfo(source).Name));