asked on 1/8/2013

DOS Compare File Name

Hello,

Can someone help me,

I’m having 2 files named the same way but having the date stamp and second stamp at the end ( YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS)

Exemple : PDF Flash Color Daily Sales Flash2013-01-08 08.32.41.326.pdf
PDF Flash Color Daily Sales Flash2013-01-08 08.45.41.326.pdf

And I would like to ensure to copy only the most resent one. How can I do that ?

This need to be done in batch.

Thanks a lot

Microsoft DOS Shell Scripting Scripting Languages

Last Comment

Bill Prew

1/8/2013

oBdA

1/8/2013

Since you have a sensible naming convention (that is, yyyymmdd instead of mmddyyyy), you can just use a regular directory sorting and pick the last one. The script below is in test mode and will only display the copy command; remove the uppercase ECHO in front of "copy" to run it for real:

@echo off
setlocal
set SourceFolder=C:\Source
set TargetFolder=C:\Target
set Prefix=PDF Flash Color Daily Sales Flash
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /b /o:n "%SourceFolder%\%Prefix%*.pdf"') do set LatestFile=%%a
echo Latest file: %LatestFile%
ECHO copy "%SourceFolder%\%LatestFile%" "%TargetFolder%"

Open in new window

If the actual time stamps of the files are correct, you could use those, too, by changing "/o:n" to "/o:d" in line 6.

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Bill Prew

1/8/2013

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Scripting Languages

A scripting language is a programming language that supports scripts, programs written for a special run-time environment that automate the execution of tasks that could alternatively be executed one-by-one by a human operator. Scripting languages are often interpreted (rather than compiled). Primitives are usually the elementary tasks or API calls, and the language allows them to be combined into more complex programs. Environments that can be automated through scripting include software applications, web pages within a web browser, the shells of operating systems (OS), embedded systems, as well as numerous games. A scripting language can be viewed as a domain-specific language for a particular environment; in the case of scripting an application, this is also known as an extension language.

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