Should Copy-Item create the destination directory structure?

Question

I\'m trying to copy a file to a new location, maintaining directory structure.

$source = \"c:\\some\\path\\to\\a\\file.txt\"
destination = \"c:\\a\\more\\dif         


        

Answer 1

I have been digging around and found a lot of solutions to this issue, all being some alteration not just a straight copy-item command. Grant it some of these questions predate PS 3.0 so the answers are not wrong but using powershell 3.0 I was finally able to accomplish this using the -Container switch for copy-item.

Copy-Item $from $to -Recurse -Container

this was the test i ran, no errors and destination folder represented the same folder structure.

New-Item -ItemType dir -Name test_copy
New-Item -ItemType dir -Name test_copy\folder1
New-Item -ItemType file -Name test_copy\folder1\test.txt
#NOTE: with no \ at the end of the destination the file is created in the root of the destination, does not create the folder1 container
#Copy-Item D:\tmp\test_copy\* D:\tmp\test_copy2 -Recurse -Container

#if the destination does not exists this created the matching folder structure and file with no errors
Copy-Item D:\tmp\test_copy\* D:\tmp\test_copy2\ -Recurse -Container