batch file - xcopy wildcard source folder name to destination

Question

I want to copy from a wildcard source folder to a destination folder:

xcopy a:parentfolder
* x:parentfolder

Only folders starting with "n" should therefore be copied to the destination.

Any help to get this working would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /b/ad "a:parentfolder
*" ') do xcopy "a:parentfolder\%%a*" x:parentfolder

As you have it, XCOPY assumes that n* is a filespec, and there's no way to tell it otherwise.