You are right about that, but should this do the trick ?
Shell '%comspec% /c Xcopy /D /R /H /Y "@CURDIR\directory\file.xxx" "c:\temp\test"'
You should be OK with that, though I'd suggest that @SCRIPTDIR is better. You probably don't need %COMSPEC% /C unless you intend to redirect the output from the command.
Think about "/" and not "F:/"
I think that's a *nix Freudian slip there.
