Command: copy
Copies one or more source files to another location
Syntax:
1. COPY [{ option }] source [{ option }] target [{ option }]
2. COPY [/A | /B] [drive][path]filename + [/A | /B] [drive]
[path]filename [+ [...]] [/A | /B] [/V] [/Y | /-Y] [/?]
[drive][path]filename
source: The source file. If more than one source file is
specified, the target must be a directory.
target: The target of the COPY process. If target is a directory,
the destination file is placed into this directory, but
with the same filename as the source file.
If exactly one source is specified, but no target, target
defaults to just ., which represant the current directory.
drive The drive letter, e.g. C:
path The directory, e.g. \example\
filename The file name, e.g. test.txt
Options:
Unless stated otherwise all options of this command do follow the
standard rules for options.
/A Forces ASCII mode, see below
/B: Specifies the mode, in which the file is copied, /A forces ASCII
and /B forces binary mode.
These options do alter the mode of the file immediately
preceeding them and all following ones, until changed again.
In binary mode the file is copied and nothing is changed at all.
In ASCII mode COPY takes special care about linefeeds / newline
characters and the end-of-line character.
On read, the newline characters, which are a sequence of two
different bytes in DOS, are transformed into a single character,
as known from Unix-style systems. On write, this single character
is transformed into the two-byte sequence.
So, if both files are copied with different modes, newline
characters are transformed into either way.
If the end-of-file character is found on read, the remaining
contents of the file is ignored. On write, such character is
appended after the last character has been written. By default,
files are copied in binary mode, whereas devices, e.g.
CON:, are copied in ASCII mode, but no end-of-file is appended.
/V Verifies that new files are written correctly.
/Y Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
existing destination file.
/-Y Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing
destination file.
/? Shows the help.
Comments:
COPY won't copy directories or files that are of zero length.
To copy either of these, use XCOPY.
Before parsing its command line COPY parses any option specified by
the ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE COPYCMD.
The COPYCMD ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE can be set to make /Y the default:
SET COPYCMD=/Y
To cancel the /Y for a particular copy command, use /-Y at the command
line. The COPYCMD variable also affects the XCOPY command.
To append files (second variant), specify a single file for
destination, but multiple files for source (using wildcards or
file1+file2+file3 format).
COPY is a command internal to command.com and needs no other file
in order to work.
Examples:
copy c:\command.com a: (first variant)
copy c:\*.exe d:\example (first variant)
copy c:\FREEDOS\BIN\*.* a:\ (first variant)
copy c:\FREEDOS\BIN\edit.* a: (first variant)
copy /A hello.txt + /A welcome.txt + /A great.txt /A together.txt
(second variant, together.txt contains everything).
See also:
command.com/freecom
del/erase
diskcopy
environment variable
move
ren/rename
set
verify
xcopy
Copyright © 2004 Robert Platt, updated 2011 and 2022 by W. Spiegl.
This file is derived from the FreeDOS Spec Command HOWTO.
See the file H2Cpying for copying conditions.