specify the sort order in “copy /b *.dat foo” in Windows cmd

Question

Normally, when I do a copy /b *.data foo in Windows cmd, the *.data files are catenated in the sorted order into the destination file foo. This matches my desired behavior.

However, I just met a curious directory in which this copy /b command will copy the files out of order. The order is not exactly random, but second last file in the sorted order will go first, followed by the remaining files in sorted order.

Is there a way to overcome this strange sorting behavior? More generally, what if I want to copy the files, say, in the reverse order?

Answer 1

This will concatenate the files in reverse order:

C:\> for /f %i in ('dir /a-d /o-n /b c:\some_dir\*') do @type %i >> c:\another_dir\dest.dat

If there are only a few files, you can list them explicitly:

C:\> copy /b c.dat+a.dat+b.dat dest.dat

Something like this might work in some situations:

C:\> copy /b file*.dat+foo.dat+bar*.dat dest.dat