How to: Copy a Directory to Another Directory in Visual Basic
Use the CopyDirectory method to copy a directory to another directory. This method copies the contents of the directory as well as the directory itself. If the target directory does not exist, it will be created. If a directory with the same name exists in the target location and overwrite is set to False, the contents of the two directories will be merged. You can specify a new name for the directory during the operation.
When copying files within a directory, exceptions may be thrown that are caused by specific file, such as a file existing during a merge while overwrite is set to False. When such exceptions are thrown, they are consolidated into a single exception, whose Data property holds entries in which the file or directory path is the key and the specific exception message is contained in the corresponding value.
To copy a directory to another directory
Use the
CopyDirectorymethod, specifying source and destination directory names. The following example copies the directory namedTestDirectory1intoTestDirectory2, overwriting existing files.My.Computer.FileSystem.CopyDirectory("C:\TestDirectory1", "C:\TestDirectory2", True)This code example is also available as an IntelliSense code snippet. In the code snippet picker, it is located in File system - Processing Drives, Folders, and Files. For more information, see Code Snippets.
Robust Programming
The following conditions may cause an exception:
The new name specified for the directory contains a colon (:) or slash (\ or /) (ArgumentException).
The path is not valid for one of the following reasons: it is a zero-length string, it contains only white space, it contains invalid characters, or it is a device path (starts with \\.\) (ArgumentException).
The path is not valid because it is
Nothing(ArgumentNullException).destinationDirectoryNameisNothingor an empty string (ArgumentNullException)The source directory does not exist (DirectoryNotFoundException).
The source directory is a root directory (IOException).
The combined path points to an existing file (IOException).
The source path and target path are the same (IOException).
ShowUIis set toUIOption.AllDialogsand the user cancels the operation, or one or more files in the directory cannot be copied (OperationCanceledException).The operation is cyclic (InvalidOperationException).
The path contains a colon (:) (NotSupportedException).
The path exceeds the system-defined maximum length (PathTooLongException).
A file or folder name in the path contains a colon (:) or is in an invalid format (NotSupportedException).
The user lacks necessary permissions to view the path (SecurityException).
A destination file exists but cannot be accessed (UnauthorizedAccessException).
