can someone help me script something...
 

I hope this isn't to imposing on someone with the right skill set...but I need some help. I could probably spend a week or two teaching myself how to do this, but my time horizon is much more pressing.

Here's my deal: I have 10000 plus directories, within each are a few files that are essentially a hosts files from a windows workstation. This is all sloppily pulled by SMS, and extracted from a SQL DB I think. The SMS folks and the SQL DBs are no longer in the picture. My directory and file names are codes that apparently relate back to data in the DB.

I need to find the files within each directory that match the default hosts file (usually located here: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc) on a windows workstation and delete them. Then I need to delete empty directories.

This should leave me only with directories which contain hosts files that DO NOT match the default hosts file from a windows workstation.

I'm told this should be relatively easy with a batch file doing some FOR and FC commands, directory "looping," and error level output reading?

I'm happy to give more background if needed.

I'm a little over my head (in that I'm not a scriptor or programmer), new to this environment, and kind of being tested. I'd really like to pass this "TEST"

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-bear

Bet perl could do it easily, but I can't script that.

i've heard that too...and neither can I.

-bear

I'll sweeten the pot if that's what needed.

I've 100.00 bucks via paypal (or whatever you choose) for something that looks scalable and can work on a sample set of 250 directories.

-bear

You know... There are some cleanup programs that are aimed at helping people remove duplicate files from their home PCs. I've not used one - but I recall seeing links around.

I wonder if you could use one of those. Because basically you want to remove the duplicates. Is that right?

Sort of. Not just duplicates per se, but ones that are identical to a source. It's not a trivial distinction.

Two identical ones that do not match the standard hosts file need to remain.

Believe me, I've tried every of the shelf, "deldupe" type app I could find...

any takers...

-bear

If you go to linux.org, bet you'd find someone pretty fast. Pretty sure we have a shortage of programmers here ;)

It doesn't have to be linux to use a perl script. It just needs to be a posix-compliant OS (windows is now). Install activestate or another perl for windows distribution.

Here's some code that did the trick:

SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

Set Default=default_hosts\hosts

FOR /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('dir /a-d /b /s "hosts_to_test\*.*"') DO (
FC "%Default%" "%%a"
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 (
DEL /q "%%a"
Set DelDir=%%~dpa
Set DelDir=!DelDir:~-1!
RD "%%~dpa"
)
)

-bear

(I see that I misunderstood before. Thanks for the gentle correction).

Bonus points there I think for doing it in .bat script. Gee.

maybe you can become the next Kevin Rose and find someone on www.elance.com to do the work you need?

I believe that is how he started Digg, by paying someone on there to write the code for him.