How do you merge two directories, or move with replace, from the windows command line without copying?

Question

So I just wrote a quick python script to move some large directories around (all on the same drive), incorrectly assuming windows command line tools weren't a complete joke and that move Root\Dir1 Root\Dir2 would, like windows explorer GUI, merge the contents. I really don't care whether it replaces or skips duplicate files within the folders because there aren't any.

Unfortunately (in an admin command prompt),

C:\>mkdir a

C:\>mkdir b

C:\>mkdir b\a

C:\>move b\a .
Overwrite C:\a? (Yes/No/All): yes
Access is denied.

... :O

... ?? really ??!?

... no, actually really really ???

It seems the only way is to copy and delete. Painfully pathetic.

Related:

• How can I move the contents of one directory tree into another?

• how to merge two folders by batch cmd

• how do i fix: 'access denied' with the move command in windows 7?

I'm not writing code to copy files one by one. Is there any way to achieve a folder move with replace without copying?

I'd prefer to use some native executable if possible. I'd also be quite happy to use python if it supported it.

Answer 1

The move-all-files-manually workaround in python. I'm still reeling from the stupidity.

def moveTree(sourceRoot, destRoot):
    if not os.path.exists(destRoot):
        return False
    ok = True
    for path, dirs, files in os.walk(sourceRoot):
        relPath = os.path.relpath(path, sourceRoot)
        destPath = os.path.join(destRoot, relPath)
        if not os.path.exists(destPath):
            os.makedirs(destPath)
        for file in files:
            destFile = os.path.join(destPath, file)
            if os.path.isfile(destFile):
                print "Skipping existing file: " + os.path.join(relPath, file)
                ok = False
                continue
            srcFile = os.path.join(path, file)
            #print "rename", srcFile, destFile
            os.rename(srcFile, destFile)
    for path, dirs, files in os.walk(sourceRoot, False):
        if len(files) == 0 and len(dirs) == 0:
            os.rmdir(path)
    return ok

Please post a proper answer if there ever is one!