Introduction
If you need to copy an entire directory to a new destination in Windows,
you can use xcopy. This guide will show you how to use xcopy
to recursively copy a directory, all of its subdirectories, and
include hidden files. We will also look at how to remove a directory with
rmdir and move a directory with move.
Recursively copy a directory
The command to recursively copy in Windows command prompt is:
xcopy some_source_dir new_destination_dir\ /E/H
It is important to include the trailing slash \ to tell xcopy the destination
is a directory.
The two options are also important:
/E- Copy all subdirectories/H- Copy hidden files too (e.g..git)
You can see more options by running:
xcopy /?
Move a directory
To simply move a directory instead of copying it, use the move command.
move some_directory new_directory_name
Remove a directory
To remove a directory and all of its contents, you can use rmdir.
rmdir some_directory /Q/S
The important options are:
/Q- Do not prompt with "Are you sure?"/S- Delete all contents and sub-directories
Run rmdir /? for more help.
Conclusion
You should now know how to recursively copy a directory including hidden files
in Windows using xcopy, delete a directory using rmdir, and move a directory
using move.