Should Copy-Item create the destination directory structure?

Here's a oneliner to do this. Split-Path retrieves the parent folder, New-Item creates it and then Copy-Item copies the file. Please note that the destination file will have the same filename as the source file. Also, this won't work if you need to copy multiple files to the same folder as with the second file you'll get An item with the specified name <destination direcory name> already exists error.

Copy-Item $source -Destination (New-Item -Path (Split-Path -Path $destination) -Type Directory)

Alternatively, with PS3.0 onwards, you can simply use the New-Item to create the target folder directly, without having to create a "dummy" file, e.g. ...

New-Item -Type dir \\target\1\2\3\4\5

...will happily create the \\target\1\2\3\4\5 structure irrespective of how much of it already exists.

The -recurse option only creates a destination folder structure if the source is a directory. When the source is a file, Copy-Item expects the destination to be a file or directory that already exists. Here are a couple ways you can work around that.

Option 1: Copy directories instead of files

$source = "c:\some\path\to\a\dir"; $destination = "c:\a\different\dir"
# No -force is required here, -recurse alone will do
Copy-Item $source $destination -Recurse

Option 2: 'Touch' the file first and then overwrite it

$source = "c:\some\path\to\a\file.txt"; $destination = "c:\a\different\file.txt"
# Create the folder structure and empty destination file, similar to
# the Unix 'touch' command
New-Item -ItemType File -Path $destination -Force
Copy-Item $source $destination -Force