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I regularly use Team Foundation Server Power Tools to run a scorch, treeclean, uu, etc.. Most of these tools have an option for /recursive that is described as

/recursive Switch from one level of recursion to full recursion

I've scoured the internet and am still unsure what /recursive actually does. An example question that I've been unable to tell the difference between running "tfpt scorch" vs "tfpt scorch /recursive".

It seems like something that probably increases the time the tool takes to run while making it (somehow) better?

PerryC
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1 Answers1

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The /recursive switch is typically available on commands which affect version control folders or files. It is used to indicate that you want to perform the task on a specified folder and all of it's sub folders.

i.e. If you have a version control folder structure similar to $/MyTeamProject/MyBranch/MyFolder/SomeSubFolders and you have checked out all of the files. You know that you haven't changed all of the files so you could run tfpt uu $/MyTeamProject/MyBranch/MyFolder. This will undo the pending changes on the files that haven't changed but only for MyFolder, if you add /recursive it will undo changes in MyFolder and all of the targets sub folders as well

James Reed
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    When using /recursive without a path, "tfpt scorch /recursive", it seems to be the same as "tfpt scorch". It will behave recursively, scorching the whole workspace (and subfolders). If you specify a path, then the recursive switch matters. With a path specified and no recursive switch, only that directory will be scorched. I'll re-accept your answer. – PerryC Nov 20 '15 at 16:30