Question

i am just trying to use copyfile to copy a file, it is as simple as that but it wont work. i have googled it and looked at 20 links and they all say “object.CopyFile ( source, destination[, overwrite] ) ”

The problem is i can’t get it to copy the txt file for me, i have tryed running it as an admin but still does not work. also i need to put the source and destination as
lpctstr (because it wont compile with out using Multi-Byte Character and my other code will not work unless i Use Unicode Character Set).

My code is

#include <iostream>
#include <Windows.h>

using namespace std;

int main()
{

 CopyFile("C:\\Somefolder\\file.txt","C:\\folder\\file.txt",0);
 return 0;
}

i am running windows 7, vc++ 2010, compiling as debug, sorry if i missed anything.

Answer 1

Replace the line:

CopyFile("C:\\Somefolder\\file.txt","C:\\folder\\file.txt",0);

with:

BOOL b = CopyFile("C:\\Somefolder\\file.txt","C:\\folder\\file.txt",0);
if (!b) {
    cout << "Error: " << GetLastError() << endl;
} else {
    cout << "Okay " << endl;
}

That should tell you if and why it’s failing. The error code, once you have it, can be looked up here.

---

And if, as your comment indicates, you’re getting ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND, the first thing I’d be looking at is whether the paths c:\somefolder and c:\folder exist as well as the actual source file c:\somefolder\file.txt.

One special thing to keep in mind: CopyFile won’t create the directory for the target file, it has to exist before you try to copy. There are numerous ways you can do this, such as with CreateDirectory, CreateDirectoryEx or SHCreateDirectoryEx).