batch file coding help needed

[ik9000]

ok, I'm new to this. Today I discovered XCopy. It is amazing. Now I'm trying to write a batch routine to automate backing up multiple folders from different locations. I could try and do it via vba which I can just about write in, but I thought it would be good to start learning about using the cmd line functions.

I've got two ini files each with a list of folder paths (all in "" and separated by ; ) eg "K:\folder 1\subfolder 2";"H:\folder 3\subfolder 4" etc

the batch file contains the following code

cd %~dp0
cmd /k For %%S in BackUp_SourceList.ini DO FOR %%d IN BackUp_DestinationList.ini DO Xcopy %%S %%d /S /E /D

it doesn't work. (the second line) - error message is BackUp_SourceList.ini was unexpected at this time.

It is supposed to take each folder path from BackUp_SourceList and copy it to BackUp_DestinationList provided the date is newer or the file doesn't already exist on the backup directory. I'm happy the /S /E /D in xcopy are correct - but I'm clearly not using the For commands properly.

I have also tried

cd %~dp0
cmd /k For %%S in BackUp_SourceList.ini DO XCOPY %%S IN BackUp_SourceList.ini %%S IN BackUp_DestinationList.ini /S /E /D

This also no good.

Is it the way I've compiled the ini files? Should I use "; " as delimiter instead of just ";"
Or is it the way I'm trying to use %%S for each value in the ini files?
Or is it something else?

Please help!

[spoon_]

Did you give Robocopy a go before? If not you might want to

Script to "mirror" two directories (you can add as many as you want), just populate source/destination and you should be good.

============================================
set backupSRC="path_to_source"
set backupDST="path_to_destination"

For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do set date=%%a.%%b.%%c_
For /F "tokens=1,2 delims=:" %%a in ('time/t') do set time=Time_%%a.%%b

set outfile="%TEMP%\%date%%time%.log"

robocopy.exe %backupSRC% %backupDST% /MIR /COPYALL /S /E /V /XD "System Volume Information" /XA:S /R:0 /W:0 /NP /LOG:%outfile%
============================================

[spoon_]

Looking at your code you need to have brackets around your *.ini file names like so:

cd %~dp0
cmd /k For %%S in (BackUp_SourceList.ini) DO XCOPY %%S IN (BackUp_SourceList.ini) %%S IN BackUp_DestinationList.ini /S /E /D

[ik9000]

Looking at your code you need to have brackets around your *.ini file names like so:

cd %~dp0
cmd /k For %%S in (BackUp_SourceList.ini) DO XCOPY %%S IN (BackUp_SourceList.ini) %%S IN BackUp_DestinationList.ini /S /E /D

I can't get this to work.

[ik9000]

bump - anyone?

So far as I can tell I'm probably using the wrong command.

if i just had a batch file that listed multiple Xcopy it would work

eg Xcopy Source1 Destination1
Xcopy source2 destination2
etc etc

I wouldn't have to use the For Do loop. But then I would have to manually write each line and any future changes. Particularly annoying if the destination is a removable drive whose letter is not known in advance.

At the moment I can easily get the list of source and destination folder names from a script which makes the ini files. What I can't seem to do is get the For loop to pull out the relevant chunks from the ini files. I've tried For /F but am struggling to get my head around the options and how to get it to do what I want.

Is there a better command I could/should try using?

[planA]

I'm not really a windows person, but my first thought would be is the command running in hte correct directory?

on unix starting a new shell (which I guess the cmd /k is doing) would reset the working directory

[psi]

Shouldn't it be "BackUp_SourceList.ini" in quote marks?