Getting forfiles help page where it shouldn't

Question

I'm using the following command to delete files older than X days (%numb% is the amount of days):

forfiles -p "%temp%" -s -m *.* -d %numb% -c "cmd /c del @path"

Still, when I execute it it just prompts me with all features of forfiles and how it should be used.

If you don't wont to use any 3rd party software, look at this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/51054/batch-file-to-delete-files-older-than-n-days/1322886#1322886 — Jay, Aug 28 '09 at 12:18
Note that contrary to what MS docs say, `/m *.*` in `forfiles` does not match all files. It will only match files whose names have an extension. If you want to match *all* files, you need `/m *`. Or just omit `/m` entirely, since `/m *` is the default. — AnT stands with Russia, Jan 16 '18 at 02:12

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 15 '09 at 02:24

4

You may want to change your "DEL @path" to "echo @path" until you get the kinks worked out...

On my XPsp3 machine, I noticed that a hyphen before the number of days (%numb%) was important. So, this:

forfiles -p "%temp%" -s -m *.* -d 30 -c "cmd /c echo @path"

yeilded this: ERROR: No files found with the specified search criteria.

but this:

forfiles -p "%temp%" -s -m *.* -d -30 -c "cmd /c echo @path"

gave me a directory listing

answered Jul 15 '09 at 02:24

RobW

424
2
5

thanks, is giving a lot of goodness... i think the before command actually said to look 30 days next... haha. – Deniz Zoeteman Aug 18 '09 at 12:06
[RobW](https://stackoverflow.com/users/110275/robw) .. your answer helped a lot.. Thanks – Vinay Kadalagi Jul 10 '15 at 08:33

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 14 '09 at 19:00

One guess, since you haven't given much information, is if you're not on 2003/Vista, then you should not have a space after each parameter:

forfiles -p"%temp%" -s -m*.* -d%numb% -c"cmd /c del @path"

It's also possible your substitution parameters are not working as expected. I find it helpful often to prefix the command with "echo" to see what's actually being processed:

echo forfiles -p "%temp%" -s -m *.* -d %numb% -c "cmd /c del @path"

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 15 '09 at 02:56

Natively, you can use vbscript. this example, num days is 30

Set objFS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
strFolder = "c:\test"
numdays=30
today=Now
Set objFolder = objFS.GetFolder(strFolder)
Go (objFolder)
Sub Go(objDIR)
  If objDIR <> "\System Volume Information" Then
    For Each eFolder in objDIR.SubFolders
        Go eFolder
    Next
    For Each strFile In objDIR.Files
        If DateDiff("d",strFile.DateLastModified,today) >= numdays Then
           WScript.Echo "file found that is 1 month old or more: " & strFile
           'objFSO.DeleteFile(strFile) 'uncomment to use
        End If 
    Next 
  End If  
End Sub

Getting forfiles help page where it shouldn't

3 Answers3