bat/cmd file help

thesteve

Howdy, need to write a bat/cmd file and need a little help. It has to do a simple function that after crawling through the web, seems not so simple.

I have a folder on a server that contains sub-folders. Basically i need to write a script that runs as a scheduled task (every week/month, etc). And the script has to keep the sub-folders less than a month old, and delete everything else.

In other words the folder on the server fills up on an irregular basis (could be 3 new sub folders a day, could be none) and we need to keep all folders for the past month and delete the rest...

Messing about with dates through dos is worknig out to be a right b!tch...

Any help appreciated

Capt'n Midnight

One way is to use the XCOPY /D /D:ddmmyy command - you copy all files less than a month old to a new folder and delete the rest and them copy them back

pharsing the date to get a month and decrementing it is messy but can be done with FOR loops.


http://www.robvanderwoude.com/index.html

seamus

Would it help any to install Perl or PHP on the server and use a PHP/Perl script to do this?

Perl is a whizz with this kind of thing.

gobby

Could even try python scripting. I had to use python recently in college for various file operations and I found it quite nice. The website has a great help section too.

Capt'n Midnight

I'm not sure how consistant syntax has been over time in Python / Perl / PHP

but the XCOPY command is all over the place with four main flavours
* Dos/Dos Mode in 9x no /D
* Win 9x command prompt /D
* NT 3/4
* 2K/XP (exclude , needing /Y to overwrite etc.)
there are subtle differences too within the flavours...

thesteve

Cheers for the replies lads, I'll give the XCOPY a go and let ye know how I get on... Never used perl before although getting training in it in a few weeks...

nutzboutstuff

why make it so complicated, install cygwin, and bash script it! a couple of greps an xargs and rm -rf and you're sorted, more details and i'll write it for you, and then you can cron it on the server for automatic execution