I love nul, but here's another way to do it...

One is to start another window to do the copying, and hide it by running it minimized:

CLS
OPEN "file123.txt" FOR OUTPUT AS #1: PRINT #1, "XCOPY Demo": CLOSE #1
SHELL "cmd /c start /min xcopy file123.txt /Q /Y c:\qb64\"
SLEEP 1: REM Needed to make sure shell gets done, first.
OPEN "c:\qb64\file123.txt" FOR INPUT AS #1
LINE INPUT #1, a$
PRINT a$
CLOSE #1
KILL "file123.txt"
KILL "c:\qb64\file123.txt"

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Pete