🚀 go-pugleaf

kisrael@diamond.tufts.edu (Kirk Israel) writes:
>What's the easiest (hopefully 1 line) way to copy a zero-byte file
>from the a Batch file (i.e. without prompting the user for info,
>ala XCOPY?)
>
>(Here's why: I'm making a program that generates .BAT files to copy
>certain batches of files- but COPY won't copy zero length files,
>XCOPY always asks "is this a file or directory", and piping the
>letter F into it is *really* inelegant...To make a zero-byte
>file I could  'type NUL > filename'   but then the date isn't
>preserved... )

The UN*X copy utility copies zero byte files, and of course preserves
the file's date of creation, so investigate some of the UN*X packages.

ftp ftp.cdrom.com /pub/garbo/garbo_pc/unix/
dskutl11.zip    Unix-like MS-DOS chmod, cp, du, find, ls, mv, page, rm

The XCOPY command asks whether the destination is a Directory or File
only where there is the possibility of it being either. Whenever the
destination is an *existing* directory, confirmation is not sought. So,
if you wish to stay with XCOPY, then you need to arrange things such
that the batch script is XCOPYing files from one directory into another,
and then the prompt will not trouble you, e.g., XCOPY  \MAIL\FLAG.*  .
where the . is DOS shorthand for the current directory.

BTW, if file1 is of 0 bytes, and file2 exists, then the command
COPY file1 file2 is identical with DEL file2 (in DOS 5, anyway).
--
John Savage               koala@sydney.dialix.com.au