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Solve : Delete files older than 7 days?

Answer»

I browsed through the entire forum and saw this question has been asked/answered several times. However, I'm not smart enough to get it working in my case. I'm using xcopy to copy folders every night through a batch job, & rename takes care to name these copied folders on the system date.
To manage disk space on the machine, I would like to clear folders that are older than a week automatically. I found something like below on the this forum:

CD\C:\Backup

for /f "skip=7 tokens=1,1,5* delims=," %%a in ('dir /A:A /OD /B /S') do del /f "%%a"

Now, am not doing something correct so this doesn't work for me. I also found the below,

echo off
set log=%temp%\filelog.log
forfiles /P c:\backup /s /m *.* /d 0 /c " cmd /c echo @file >"%log%" "
if exist "%log%" (
forfiles /p c:\backup /s /m *.* /d -1 /c "cmd /c del @file"
)
del %temp%\filelog.log

Files I need to delet are in c:\backup & am just running the above .bat scripts. Doesn't work me, sadly:(

help much appreciated
cvpI'm not sure what context these snippets were written, but I don't see where either of them is doing a 7 day aging function.

Quote

CD\C:\Backup
for /f "skip=7 tokens=1,1,5* delims=," %%a in ('dir /A:A /OD /B /S') do del /f "%%a"

This little ditty merely sorts a directory listing of files that have the archive bit set. After skipping the first 7 files in the list, it proceeds to delete the rest of them.

Quote
echo off
set log=%temp%\filelog.log
forfiles /p c:\backup /s /m *.* /d 0 /c " cmd /c echo @file >"%log%" "
if exist "%log%" (
forfiles /p c:\backup /s /m *.* /d -1 /c "cmd /c del @file"
)
del %temp%\filelog.log

Not really up-to-date with the forfiles command, I'm guessing this will delete files dated either today or yesterday.

This little routine may actually do what you need:

Code: [SELECT]Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set f = fso.GetFolder("c:\backup")
Set colSubFolders = f.SubFolders

For Each objFolder in colSubFolders
ShowFiles objFolder
Next

Sub ShowFiles(Fld)
Set k = fso.GetFolder(Fld)
Set s = k.SubFolders
Set kf = k.Files

For Each objFile In kf
If objFile.DateCreated < date - 7 Then
Wscript.Echo objFile & " " & objFile.DateCreated
End If
Next

For Each SubFolder In s
ShowFiles SubFolder
Next
End Sub

As written the snippet will simply list the files older than a week. Save the file with a vbs extension and run as cscript scriptname.vbs

Once your satisfied that these are the files you intend to delete, replace

Wscript.Echo objFile & " " & objFile.DateCreated

with

fso.DeleteFile objFile, True

and run the job again.

Good luck. Hi Thank you

I didn't follow the line 'run as cscript scriptname.vbs". I saved the vbs as test.vbs. What am I exactly supposed to do after this?

Another q, the server doesn't allow VB. Is it POSSIBLE to achieve this using a batch file ?

Will wait for your response.My machine is Windows 2003 Server.
So, do you think this should work?
forfiles /p c:\backup /s /m *.* /d -7 /c "cmd /c del @file : date >= 7 days"Yes, you would run the script as cscript test.vbs. When you are satisfied that these are the files to delete, make the code change and re-run the job. I guess scriptname should have been in italics.

While your machine may not have VB installed, VBScript is installed on all Windows versions since Win95C.

Code: [Select]FORFILES v 1.1 - [emailprotected] - 4/98


Syntax : FORFILES [-pPath] [-mSearch Mask] [-ccommand] [-d<+|-><DDMMYYYY|DD>] [-
s]

-pPath Path where to start searching
-mSearch Mask Search files according to <Search Mask>
-cCommand Command to execute on each file(s)
-d<+|-><DDMMYYYY|DD> Select files with date >= or <=DDMMYYYY (UTC)
or files having date >= or <= (current date - DD days)
-s Recurse directories
-v Verbose mode

The following variables can be used in Command :
@FILE, @FNAME_WITHOUT_EXT, @EXT, @PATH, @RELPATH, @ISDIR, @FSIZE, @FDATE,
@FTIME

To include special hexa characters in the command line : use 0xHH

Default : <Directory : .> <Search Mask : *.*> <Command : "CMD /C Echo @FILE">
Examples :
FORFILES -pc:\ -s -m*.BAT -c"CMD /C Echo @FILE is a batch file"
FORFILES -pc:\ -s -m*.* -c"CMD /C if @ISDIR==TRUE echo @FILE is a directory"
FORFILES -pc:\ -s -m*.* -d-100 -c"CMD /C Echo @FILE : date >= 100 days"
FORFILES -pc:\ -s -m*.* -d-01011993 -c"CMD /C Echo @FILE is quite old!"
FORFILES -pc:\ -s -m*.* -c"CMD /c echo extension of @FILE is [emailprotected]"

I have no experience with forfiles, so I may not be the best one to ask. Best I can recommend would be to test out your code in a test directory until it works.

Good luck.


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