Batch File - delete everything not modified in x days
 

I'm looking to do exactly what the title says via a batch file. I'd like to schedule this to run weekly on my FTP server.

I've tested this extremely simple line in a batch file:

del *.* /s /q

(delete all files, in all subdirectories, in quiet mode)

Although it says to delete *.*, it doesn't delete my folder directory structure, which is good because I have an FTP server with roughly 100 virtual ftp directories.

What I need to figure out is how to specify to only delete files that have not been modified in x amount of days. X will probably equal 14.

I'm currently trying to read some of the documentation I found on M$'s site, but I'm not having much luck understanding this stuff. Does anyone know how to do this? I'm not looking for a quick out, I'm trying to learn as well so an explanation of how the switches work, or just a link to a better tutorial to learn how to write these scripts myself would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks

Normally I'd say sure. Everything but dates are one-liners. Date math, and the shifting boundary conditions make for fugly batches. Have you considered using WSH, a stand alone exe, cygwin, or PERL? WSH is automatic and provides much better date arithmetic. Also, its documentation is better than the batch file bird-crumbs spread hither and yon.

I'm not familiar with WSH, and perl is fine. I have it installed already on a couple machines for MRTG, so I don't mind installing it here. I just thought the .bat route would be easy cheezy.

BAT files are very dangerous, becuase they're loosely controlled and very underutilized - I'd be willing to bet you could find 1000s of people who wrote Perl scripts to delete files not modified in a given number of days; including their "oops" moments that lead to entire server deletion (and nicely enough, workarounds to avoid those situations)

But I think you'd be hard pressed to find 10 people who'd written windows bat scripts to do the same..

Yep, a bat would work, but its syntax and finesse are like C's insane, stupid, asshole brother. Or you can resort to batch extensions which defeat any simplicity. Since you already have PERL installed, use it. Tool consistency is golden.

OK cool I'll see what I can find out there in PERL.

I suggest learning VBScript. I have written exactly what you need with it, it's very easy if you've written scripts before. I can provide the script if you want to go the vbscript route.

Ga. This is where Windows really sucks. It's easy in UNIX.

I've a FORALL utility that I use at work. I just did a search - I'm not sure if the following is the same, but it might help. (Check the FORALL tool)

http://short.stop.home.att.net/freesoft/batch1.htm

If there's a "pure" MS command line method that works, I'd be interested in hearing it. The FOR command seems to have a lot of new options in NT, but I'm not sure any quite do the job.

There's also a new "PowerShell" from MS.

imouseone - I'd love to see that script. I'm sorry I didn't see your response earlier