Question

I am looking to open up a command prompt and pass in a copy command, some switches, and the source file plus destination. I’ve tried the code below but nothing appears to be happening. What am I not seeing? What could I be doing wrong?

String line;  line = 'cmd COPY /Y C:\srcfolder\112.bin C:\destfolder';  Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(line);  p.waitFor(); 

Answer 1

If you really have to use an external command, then you probably want to execute (notice the /C):

CMD /C COPY /Y C:\srcfolder\112.bin C:\destfolder 

I recommend you use the array version of exec to avoid handling of quoting (should any files or directories contain spaces – or double-quotes – in them):

String[] args = { 'CMD', '/C', 'COPY', '/Y', src_file, dest_folder }; Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(args); p.waitFor(); 

Remember that this is not portable (will not work on Unix), so unless you really really need to use COPY then you should use the method linked to by bstpierre.