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Recursively Copy folder contents to another in C#

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6 Nov 2011CPOL 51.9K   13   4
How to recursively copy folder contents to another in C#.
C#
private bool CopyFolderContents(string SourcePath, string DestinationPath)
{
   SourcePath = SourcePath.EndsWith(@"\") ? SourcePath : SourcePath + @"\";
   DestinationPath = DestinationPath.EndsWith(@"\") ? DestinationPath : DestinationPath + @"\";
 
   try
   {
      if (Directory.Exists(SourcePath))
      {
         if (Directory.Exists(DestinationPath) == false)
         {
            Directory.CreateDirectory(DestinationPath);
         }

         foreach (string files in Directory.GetFiles(SourcePath))
         {
            FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo(files);
            fileInfo.CopyTo(string.Format(@"{0}\{1}", DestinationPath, fileInfo.Name), true);
         }

         foreach (string drs in Directory.GetDirectories(SourcePath))
         {
            DirectoryInfo directoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(drs);
            if (CopyFolderContents(drs, DestinationPath + directoryInfo.Name) == false)
            {
               return false;
            }
         }
      }
      return true;
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
      return false;
   }
}

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


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Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralThere is no need to add \ on SourcePath and DestinationPath ... Pin
Ivan Ičin8-Nov-11 8:46
Ivan Ičin8-Nov-11 8:46 
GeneralIf the SourcePath do not exists, it returns true. I think th... Pin
InCodeVB7-Nov-11 22:05
InCodeVB7-Nov-11 22:05 
QuestionYour string.Concat benchmark is WRONG!!! Pin
motorboy7914-Nov-11 20:55
motorboy7914-Nov-11 20:55 
AnswerRe: Your string.Concat benchmark is WRONG!!! Pin
Kabwla.Phone29-Nov-11 6:22
Kabwla.Phone29-Nov-11 6:22 
This is very valuable information, though the aim was to show the difference between concat and string.format. I am not sure where you got the idea of the string builder.
I ran the code from the debugger, with optimizations disabled so I have never noticed this behaviour.

There is an article by either John Skeet or Eric Lippert that goes into much more detail about the differences between the three methods. His conclussion: "It does not matter (much)" it's very fast anyway. Especially when performance of the code is limited by anything but the cost of the string operation. Since we are working with File-IO I am sure this is the case.

If we really cared about memory consumption, we should rewrite the function to be non-recursive (perhaps by using this: Findcontrol using a non recursive approach[^])and use one (or two) stringbuilders to build the paths (emptying the stringbuilder after each operation).
That way few objects will be created and the memory space of the stringbuilder will be resued for the strings. This will not make the method any prettier Wink | ;-)

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