Boneheaded question of the day

[backlund]

For the life of me, I must be losing it because I can't figure this out, or find anything on it. I'm sure it's easy, but I'm asking for help now!

I have a script that copies my documents to a folder every night on a second hard drive, for backup reasons.

I want to set the script up so that once a month it renames the folder. This will give me a clean backup of the my documents folder and not include all the junk I don't need. When the old folder is renamed, I will still have access to old stuff I deleted in case I need it.

Anyway, I can't figure out how to rename the folder through command line! I'm sure I'm just doing something wrong.

If anyone knows how to rename a folder through command line, I would appreciate the help.

Otherwise, if there is an easy command that would allow syncing between two folders, that would work as well.

I don't want to delete the backup my documents folder every night, because it has about 4 gig of pictures in it that I don't want to wait for to copy every night. Currently the backup script does an initial copy, and then only copies files that have a changed "Modified" date on them, or any new files that are added.

Thanks!

 

[vacunita]

Renames a file or files.

RENAME [drive:][path]filename1 filename2.
REN [drive:][path]filename1 filename2.

Note that you cannot specify a new drive or path for your destination file.

the other method is using the move command.

move C:\myfile.txt d:\hisfile.txt

this will create a file named hisfile.txt in drive D: with the contents of myfile.txt from the C: drive. and will delete myfile.txt from the c: drive.



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[backlund]

I tried the rename command and it seems to be reserved only for files, unless I'm doing something wrong. The MOVE command, is the key, now that I think about it! Thanks for the refresher!

 

[vacunita]

Rename works with folders also. you can't rename folders that are not located excatly where the command was issued.

C:\>rename C:\files\documents C:\files\olddocuments

will not work, however

C:\files\>rename documents olddocuments

will work fine.

Also long names will cause erros, for example:

My Documents , would be referred to at command line level as MyDocu~1
This is because most command line commands retain the 8.3 name convention. that is 8 characters for the name a 3 for extension.

Also folders that have names that contain "." will also cause trouble.

To find out what the 8.3 name of a folder would be you can use the Dir commans with the /x modifier.

DIR /X.

Hope this helps.




----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[viper1777]

You can always user

RENAME "My Douments" "My Old Documents"

Hope this helps.

Thanx!

Dave Shaw
History admires the wise, but elevates the brave. - Edmund Morris