How to copy a directory in Kotlin?

In this tutorial, you shall learn how to copy a directory (all the files and sub-directories in it) to a new path in Kotlin using copyRecursively() function, with example programs.

Kotlin – Copy directory

To copy a directory in Kotlin, where you copy all the files and sub-directories, you can use copyRecursively() function of java.io.File class.

Steps to copy a directory

1. Consider that we would like to copy a directory from source location to target location.
2. Create two file objects: one with the source directory path, and the other with target directory path, using java.io.File class.
3. Call copyRecursively() function on the source directory object, and pass the target directory object as argument. The function copies the source directory to target directory.

val sourceDir = File("source/directory")
val targetDir = File("target/directory")
sourceDir.copyRecursively(targetDir)

Example

For this example, we will consider a directory at the path mydata/set1/.

In the following program, we copy the directory mydata/set1/ to mydata/set2/.

Main.kt

import java.io.File
import java.lang.Exception

fun main() {
    val sourceDir = File("mydata/set1/")
    val targetDir = File("mydata/set2/")

    try {
        if (sourceDir.copyRecursively(targetDir)) {
            println("Directory copied successfully.")
        } else {
            println("Directory not copied successfully.")
        }
    } catch (e: Exception) {
        println("Exception occurred while copying.")
    }
}

Output

Directory copied successfully.

Conclusion

In this Kotlin Tutorial, we learned how to copy a directory recursively using File.copyRecursively() function.