Creating input subfolder structure inside output folder

Question

I have a batch script that:

1. read input files from a folder
2. elaborate them
3. store output files in another folder

Example code:

set pathTmp=D:\a\b\c
set pathIn=%pathTmp%\in
set pathOut=%pathTmp%\out

for /f %%i in ('dir /b %pathIn%') do ( 
    java XXX.jar %pathIn%\%%i >> %pathOut%\%%i
)

Now I'd like to modify it to read files from all subfolders of pathIn and put the output file in the same subfolder but under pathOut.

Example: if input file is in pathIn\zzz, the output file must be in pathOut\zzz.

How can I recreate the input subfolder structure inside output folder?

Answer 1

I would use xcopy together with the /L switch (to list files that would be copied) to retrieve the relative paths. For this to work, you need to change to the directory %pathIn% first and specify a relative source path (for this purpose, the commands pushd and popd can be used).

For example, when the current working directory is D:\a\b\c\in and its content is...:

D:\a\b\c\in
         |   data.bin
         +---subdir1
         |       sample.txt
         |       sample.xml
         \---subdir2
                 anything.txt

...the command line xcopy /L /I /S /E "." "D:\a\b\c\out" would return:

.\data.bin
.\subdir1\sample.txt
.\subdir1\sample.xml
.\subdir2\anything.txt
3 File(s)

As you can see there are paths relative to the current directory. To get rid of the summary line 3 File(s), the find ".\" command line is used to return only those lines containing .\.

So here is the modified script:

set "pathTmp=D:\a\b\c"
set "pathIn=%pathTmp%\in"
set "pathOut=%pathTmp%\out"

pushd "%pathIn%"
for /F "delims=" %%I in ('xcopy /L /I /S /E "." "%pathOut%" ^| find ".\"') do (
    md "%pathOut%\%%I\.." > nul 2>&1
    java "XXX.jar" "%%I" > "%pathOut%\%%I"
)
popd

Additionally, I placed md "%pathOut%\%%I\.." > nul 2>&1 before the java command line so that the directory is created in advance, not sure if this is needed though. The redirection > nul 2>&1 avoids any output, including error messages, to be displayed.

I put quotation marks around all paths in order to avoid trouble with white-spaces or any special characters in them. I also quoted the assignment expressions in the set command lines.

You need to specify the option string "delims=" in the for /F command line, because the default options tokens=1 and delims=TABSPACE would split your paths unintentionally at the first white-space.

Note that the redirection operator >> means to append to a file if it already exists. To overwrite, use the > operator (which I used).

Answer 2

You could do something like this:

@setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
@echo off
set pathTmp=D:\a\b\c
set pathIn=%pathTmp%\in
set pathOut=%pathTmp%\out

REM set inLength=ADD FUNCTION TO CALCULATE LENGTH OF PATHIN 

for /f %%i in ('dir /b /s %pathIn%') do ( 
    set var=%%i 
    java XXX.jar %%i >> %pathOut%\!var:~%inLength%!
)

This will strip the length of the pathIn directory from the absolute path leaving only the relative path. Then it appends the relative path onto the pathOut var

You would need to find or write a function to get the length of the the pathIn string. Check out some solutions here.