Copying files that match one pattern but not another

Question

I have a number of files that follow a pattern like this:

<BaseName> . <Version> [ - <Tag> - <#> ] . <Extension>

For example:

basename.1.0.0.ext
basename.1.0.0-aaa-1.ext
basename.1.0.0-aaa-2.ext
basename.1.0.0-aaa-3.ext
basename.1.0.0-bbb-1.ext
basename.1.0.0-bbb-2.ext
basename.1.0.0-bbb-3.ext

Now I need to write a strict that will copy just file with a certain 'tag' part (or no 'tag') an target folder. For example:

xcopy *-aaa-*.ext \\server\path /f /y

Will copy only files with the 'aaa' tag. So far so good.

The problem is that the script also needs to work for files with no 'tag', basically I need everything that matches *.ext except what matches *-*.ext.

Unfortunately, I have a number of restrictions here:

• I am not able to change the name pattern or location of these files.
• The 'version' part is not known, so *.1.0.0.ext will not work.
• The 'version' is not a fixed length, so *.?.?.?.ext will not work.
• xcopy's exclude parameter doesn't accept a pattern, only a list of files, so this won't work.
• I am stuck using batch scripting for this. Invoking PowerShell is not entirely out of the question, but it would require a fair amount of overhead to get it working, so I'd like to avoid this if possible.

• The actual script will have to look like this:

  xcopy "%SOURCE%" "%DEST%" /f /y
  

  And the variables used by this script will be saved in an external configuration file.

How can I write this script so that it works with any set of files, both a specific 'tag' and without any 'tag'?

Answer 1

foo.bat:

dir /b %3 > exclude_list.txt
xcopy %1 %2 /f /y /EXCLUDE:exclude_list.txt

For exclusions like in your example:

call foo.bat "C:\source\*.ext" "C:\destination\" "*-*.ext"

For no exclusions (inelegant hack"):

call foo.bat "C:\source\*.ext" "C:\destination\" "A_STRING_THAT_CANNOT_MATCH"

See also Robocopy switch /xf {filename}

Answer 2

So this is what I'm using right now:

for /f "delims=" %%f in ('dir /b "*.ext" ^| findstr "%TAG%"') do (
    xcopy "%ff" %DEST% /f /y
)

So to copy a given tag, you just have to specify TAG=-aaa-, and you could even specify multiple tags separated by spaces, like TAG=-aaa -bbb-.

The down side is that to deploy the files that don't have a tag, you'd have to do something really ugly like TAG=^[^-]*$. Although I could refactor it in the future so that it also takes a variable to specify the /v flag (which inverts the behavior of findstr), but that doesn't seem necessary at the moment.