CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsbatch-filecmd
GabrielVE
GabrielVE

Reputation: 23

simple batch file to delete specific files in a folder/sub folder and log the results

I'm trying to create a batch file that will delete multiple files, then append a log with those deleted files. This batch file will need to run via Windows Task Scheduler daily.

I have started off with this batch file with the ffg content (the list will be lengthy as there are lots of user files to remove)

del "[John Doe]*.wav" /s 
del "[Pete Pan]*.wav" /s

Upvotes: 0

Views: 61

Answers (1)

K J
K J

Reputation: 11857

To ensure logging of file deletion is active the batch file should start with,

Setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS

To use a list of variable names, use a for loop of list and redirect output to log.

for /f "tokens=*" %%f in (names.txt) do del /S "[%%f]*.wav" >>Deleted.txt

Thus the CMD file is at its simplest

Setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS
for /f "tokens=*" %%f in (names.txt) do del /S "[%%f]*.wav" >>Deleted.txt

Where the names.txt is

John Doe
Joe Blogs
Pete Pan

ETC. Etc.

Note good practice before deletion is use a test folder to ensure it is confined to one area. And ensure the file system is good perhaps by running CHKDSK once in a while!

For those who also need to /Recurse folders. A rough outline is to wrap the loop in another, so something like:

Setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS
for /R "%~dp0" %%d in (.) do (
cd /d "%%d"
for /f "tokens=*" %%f in (%~dp0names.txt) do del /S "[%%f]*.wav" >>"%~dp0Deleted.txt"
)

Upvotes: 0

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