CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#
theraneman
theraneman

Reputation: 1630

Removing files that are older than some number of days

I guess this is a pretty common requirement in a application that does quite a bit of logging. I am working on a C# Windows application, .NET 3.5.

My app generates tons of log files which has a current date put in the file name like so 20091112. What would be the best strategy to remove files older than say 30 days. One approach I am about to use it, is to loop through the file names, extract the date part, convert into DateTime object and compare with today's date. Is there an elegant Regular Expression solution to this :) ? Or something better?

Upvotes: 27

Views: 35114

Answers (7)

Neha Vishwakarma
Neha Vishwakarma

Reputation: 1

string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(path);
foreach (string file in files)
 {
  if (File.GetLastWriteTime(file) < DateTime.Now.AddDays(-5))
    {
      File.Delete(file);
    }
 }

Upvotes: 0

PernerOl
PernerOl

Reputation: 417

update .net 4.0:

var files = new DirectoryInfo(directoryPath).GetFiles("*.log");
foreach (var file in files.Where(file => DateTime.UtcNow - file.CreationTimeUtc > TimeSpan.FromHours(2))) {
     file.Delete();
}

Upvotes: 13

Ruben Bartelink
Ruben Bartelink

Reputation: 61795

[In PowerShell] you could paste the following into a PS1 file and make it part of an admin script if that suits:-

param($path=$(throw "Need to indicate path"), $daysToRetain=$(throw "Need to indicate how many days to retain"))

dir $path -r | ? { ([datetime]::UtcNow - $_.CreationTimeUtc).TotalDays -gt $daysToRetain } | del

EDIT: And you can use -match to parse the name if you feel using the file times isnt the right thing to do

Upvotes: 1

yu_sha
yu_sha

Reputation: 4410

As I understand, you want to use file name rather than modification time. Fine.

Then the code is like this:

    foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(path))
    {
        string fileNameOnly=Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(file);
        DateTime fileDate = DateTime.ParseExact(fileNameOnly, "yyyyMMDD", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);
        if (DateTime.Now.Subtract(fileDate).TotalDays > MaxDays)
            File.Delete(file);
    }

Upvotes: 1

bniwredyc
bniwredyc

Reputation: 8829

string directoryPath = "/log"; // your log directory path

foreach (string filePath in Directory.GetCreationTime(directoryPath))
{
    TimeSpan fileAge = File.GetLastWriteTime(filePath) - DateTime.Now;
    if (fileAge.Days > 30)
    {
        File.Delete(filePath);
    }
}

Upvotes: 1

Konamiman
Konamiman

Reputation: 50273

Substracting two DateTime objects will give you a TimeSpan object, then you can just check its TotalDays property. I can't think of anything simpler than this.

Upvotes: 0

Darin Dimitrov
Darin Dimitrov

Reputation: 1038830

var files = new DirectoryInfo(@"c:\log").GetFiles("*.log");
foreach (var file in files)
{
    if (DateTime.UtcNow - file.CreationTimeUtc > TimeSpan.FromDays(30))
    {
        File.Delete(file.FullName);
    }
}

Upvotes: 37

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