Friday, October 30, 2009

Ever try to use copy?

Today, I was working on some automated builds for Opticks, and I needed to use the windows "copy" command as part of the automated build process. So, I wrote:

copy foo.zip bar.zip

and then my 250 MB foo.zip was turned into a 55 byte bar.zip. And I was so very confused until I discovered that copy has "/B" flag. This apparently tells copy that a "binary" file is involved and then all my problems went away. I thought about researching the history of the "/B" flag, but I'm not sure I want to know. I think my life might be better not knowing.

So, for the record please use:

copy /B foo.zip bar.zip

It saves lives.

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