Dos script to search multiple txt files created yesterday containing certain string and moving to another folder.

OK.  How can we identify these files.  Are they all the files from yesterdays date in one directory, or anywhere in subdirs under a start point etc?

Can soon do this with yesterdays date but one classic way of dealing with such things is to schedule a task before midnight and then it is actually "todays" documents you are looking for.

Likewise are these added into a directory with a load of other files, or could you for instance:

start with an empty dir
files get created
you already want certain files moved to a different dir.  If you moved the other files too to another dir (or deleted them if not needed say) then the next day you just need to process all files again.

Anyway please give a few examples and one of us here can write a script around that.

Dragon,

the files are all in the same directory and will have the pattern col*.txt.I will be looking for all files with string "XXX04" in them. The files I need to move will be amongst other files with similar file name pattern. This will need to be executed on a daily basis as new files are created daily.

Hope this helps.

Steve,

Also sorry to be a pain. On reflection it would be helpful if we could pick up just previous days files and copy instead of move. Off hand do you know if this search could be extended to search pdf's?

Many thanks,

Jon

OK... searching PDf's will probably work as long as they actually contain those text characters in the file.... it could be split up by formatting characters, or the PDF could be produced graphically and not contain the text at all?  Does it get found if you run a manual FIND against the PDF file, i.e.:

find /i "XXX04" yourfile.pdf

OK.  Haven't been able to test this one out yet but here is a first pass:

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

REM Get yesterdays date
echo wscript.echo right(100 + month(date-1),2) ^& "-" ^& right(100+day(date-1 ),2) ^& "-" ^& year(date - 1) > "%temp%\dateparts.vbs"
for /f "tokens=1 delims=" %%a in ('cscript //nologo "%temp%\dateparts.vbs"') do set yesterday=%%a
echo %yesterday% in format mm-dd-yyyy ready for xcopy

REM Set configuration
set sourcedir=C:\sourcedir
set searchfor="XXX04"
set destdir="C:\moveto"
set tempdir=%temp%\check
set error=

REM Create and remove previous files from tempdir
mkdir "%tempdir%"
del "%tempdir%\*.*" 2>NUL

REM Copy yesterday or newer files to temporary dir - col*.txt and col*.pdf, change as needed
xcopy /d %yesterday% "%sourcedir%\col*.txt" %tempdir%
xcopy /d %yesterday% "%sourcedir%\col*.pdf" %tempdir%

REM Check all files in temporary dir, move required ones to destination, delete others
cd /d %tempdir%
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('findstr /M /L /I %searchfor% *.*') do (
echo Moving %%a to %destdir%
move /Y "%%a" %destdir%
if errorlevel 1 set error=!error! %%a
)

if not "%error%"=="" echo There was an error moving %error% if you want to deal with this or email it etc...

How I got yesterdays date above is described in my article here:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/MS_DOS/A_1153-Using-dates-in-batch-files-scripts.html

Steve,

The find command searched the pdf's but findstr does not seem to and therefore your first solution produces no results. Any idea why?

Regards.

Steve,

Sorry, on further investigation, the find command is returning all pdf names not just those that contain the string.

Regards.

Hmm, I've just ran a FINDSTR command against an old dir of PDF's:

findstr /M /I /L "dragon" *.pdf
and it returned only 5 files out of hundreds created with pdf995.

Can you post / email (see my profile, click dragon-it above for email address) one of the PDF files in question that DOES and one that does NOT have the string in at all?

Steve,

The 2 pdf's have been sent to contactus at your email domain.

regards.

Jon,

Well I had always assumed the text bits would most likely be plain text within the PDF but clearly they aren't so the text you mentioned for the account number does not appear.  Will see if there are any PDF searching command line tools available unless anyone else gets there first!
Steve

I have failed so far to find any sensible third party command line application that can search a PDF for it's contents -- I had always assumed that within the file the text parts would be stored as normal text and searchable with FIND therefore but it seems they aren't... if you can find a suitable util. before I do that allows searching from the command line then we can add to it.

Hi,

You can do this by using robocopy command, the command will loook something like this,

robocopy "source" "destination"  col*.txt /s /v /r:0 /w:0 /MAXAGE:1

Can robocopy search the contents of a PDF file to identify  string within it?

Robocopy can't read the content. I gave the idea just in case it would help using the filename.