I was copying a huge number of png and txt files using Copy-Item
cmdlet, and sadly I discovered that a funny programmer decided to use "CON" as file name to recap connection information.
Given that "con" is a reserved word and Copy-Item
returns:
Copy-Item : Cannot process path 'xxx\con.txt' because the target represents a reserved device name.
and given that this name can't be changed and it's used in every folder I need to copy, Is there a way to copy all these "con.cfg" and "con.txt" files using Powershell?
I googled but I found only advice like "Don't use con!" or "Don't use Powershell to copy these files".
I haven't been able to find a solution for PowerShell yet, but you should be able to rename the files via command prompt using something like this:
ren \\.\<absolute path> <new name>
So for example:
ren \\.\C:\stuff\con.cfg stuff.cfg
You could invoke the command prompt through PowerShell, of course:
cmd /c "ren \\.\C:\stuff\con.cfg stuff.cfg"
And obviously you could use PowerShell variables in there if you wanted
$dir = "C:\stuff"
cmd /c "ren \\.\$dir\con.cfg stuff.cfg"