xcopy /exclude issue

Question

I am trying to run xcopy that copies files excluding .obj, etc. What I am seeing is that Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder.dll is not copied when my excludes.txt file contains .obj as an extension. When .obj is removed, I Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder.dll is copied correctly. This does not happen to other dlls though.

Does anyone have any idea why this would happen?

Thanks!

Lenik

Answer 1

Yeah, xcopy is dumb like that.

Do this:

dir /b *.obj >excludes.txt
xcopy * /exclude:excludes.txt targetdir

although this will still have the problem sometimes.

If you had a file called practices.obj, for example, it wouldn't copy that, but it would also fail to copy your Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder.dll

A handy trick is if you specify /s on dir, you get recursion and the full path, then if you specify the source directory fully on the xcopy, the excludes will have to match from the beginning:

dir /s /b *.obj >excludes.txt
xcopy c:\sourcedir\* /exclude:excludes.txt \targetdir

Now Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder.dll would only fail to copy if you happen to have a Microsoft.Practices.obj file in the same directory. Get it?

Answer 2

I guess because the substring .obj is found in the name Microsoft.Practices**.Obj**ectBuilder.dll and since windows is not case sensitive, it will exclude it.