Create a Batch File to delete files in a folder i specify

However, that will delete *everything* (including folders) within the folder, if you only want to delete the FILES, then use this batch file instead:


@ECHO OFF
TITLE File Deleter

SET Directory=c:\directory\to\delete

CLS
ECHO.
ECHO Deleting all files in %Directory% . . .

DEL "%Directory%\*.*" /q >NUL

PING -n 1 localhost>NUL
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO Complete!
ECHO.
ECHO Press any key to exit . . .
PAUSE>NUL


Then you just change this line:

SET Directory=c:\directory\to\delete

To specify the directory that you want to delete it's content of...

Make sense? :-)
[r.D]

If there's a list of specific filenames that you wish to delete, rather than *all* files, then you can do something like this:

Create a text file, called "FilesToDel" (.txt), then list in it, all filenames to delete, for example, something like this:

FileName1.ext
anotherFile.txt
anotherApp.exe
;etc..

You can then use this batch file to delete all of those files:

@ECHO OFF
TITLE File Deleter

SET Directory=c:\directory\to\delete
SET FileNameList=FilesToDel.txt

CLS
ECHO.
ECHO Preparing to delete a list of files . . .
ECHO.

IF NOT EXIST "%FileNameList%" (
   ECHO Cannot locate %FileNameList%.
   ECHO.
   ECHO Please place it into this directory: %CD% . . .
   :LOOP_0
   IF EXIST "%FileNameList%" GOTO :BREAK_1
   GOTO :LOOP_0
)
:BREAK_1

ECHO File located!
ECHO.

ECHO Parsing file . . .
ECHO.

FOR /F "tokens=* delims=" skip=;" %%L in (%FileNameList%) do CALL :PROCESS "%%L"

GOTO :EOF

:PROCESS
SET FileName=%~1
TITLE Deleting %FileName%
DEL "%Directory%\%FileName%" /F>NUL
EXIT /B

:EOF
TITLE File Deleter
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO Complete!



HTH,
[r.D]

i dont want to delete folders. I want to have a template of a batch file where i just need to insert the file name into the blanks and run it.

The folder will be called "C:\Wyeth Content Folder"
from time to time i will want to remove files with html extensions.

can you create a template batch file where i just fill in the file name?

Try this:

@echo off

setlocal

if "%~1"=="" echo Please enter file name to delete&goto :EOF

set FileName=C:\Wyeth Content Folder\%~1

if not exist "%FileName%" echo %FileName% does not exist&goto :EOF

del "%FileName%" >NUL
echo %FileName% deleted

Good Luck,
Steve

ok, im a little slow...if i had a file that was test.html

where would that go?

and if i had multiple files to delete where would they go?

please redo the above with the following files
test.html
test2.html
test3.html
test4.html


thank you so much!!!

If you named the batch file as DeleteMyFiles.bat you'd say:

call DeleteMyFiles.bat test.html
call DeleteMyFiles.bat test2.html
call DeleteMyFiles.bat test3.html
call DeleteMyFiles.bat test4.html

We could modify the program to accept multiple files on the command line:

@echo off

setlocal

if "%~1"=="" echo Please enter at least one file name to delete&goto :EOF

:NEXT

set FileName=C:\Wyeth Content Folder\%~1

if not exist "%FileName%" echo %FileName% does not exist&goto :GETNEXT

del "%FileName%" >NUL
echo %FileName% deleted

:GETNEXT

shift
if not "%~1"=="" goto :NEXT

This could would allow you to do the following:

call DeleteMyFiles.bat test.html test2.html test3.html test4.html

Note, that if any of your files have embedded spaces in their names you should double quote it. You can double quote all file names without any harm:

call DeleteMyFiles.bat test.html test2.html test3.html test4.html "This in another html file.html"

im very slow when it comes to DOS...

could you put out the whole batch file with the filenames on different lines?

thank you