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Delete files with names matching a list

I am using Windows 7. I have a directory with a very large number of xml files. I want to delete all files such as the name is included in a list I have. For the sake of argument, let's say this consists only of the names

file1.xml
file2.xml

I think it should be possible to create a .bat file which does this for me, rather than do it manually, which would take ages? If so, I would be very grateful if someone could provide an example of such a Windows script.

Haris Dulic

Here is the code...

You just need to set source folder and the script will erase anything that matches the pattern... FILE*.XML..

@echo off
set source=C:\30092014
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('dir /b /a-d "%source%\file*.xml"') do call del %%a

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Rothbard

ASKER

Thanks, but as I said the names I gave were just an example. The names of the files I need to delete don't match any sort of pattern, unfortunately.

Let's say I have a file called NODELETE.txt, which is just a long list of names of files I do NOT want to delete. I need a script which will delete all files whose names are not included in NODELETE.txt.

Thanks in advance.

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Haris Dulic

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Rothbard

ASKER

Thanks, works great

ExpertNotReally

Based off of your first question, you have a list of files that you need deleted. Below is a powershell script that will do just what you need. I know you asked for a bat file, but having Windows 7 gives you powershell which is by far more robust than command prompt. The below code has the paths hard coded in but can easily be changed to take the paths as parameters. Save the code to a file with the .ps1 extension and replace the paths with the proper paths to the text file that has the list of files to be deleted and the directory the files to be deleted are located. Be sure the text file has one name per line.

$fileNameList = gc "C:\path\to\list\of\names.txt"
$directory="C:\path\to\directory"
$filesInDir = gci $directory

foreach ($file in $filesInDir) {
  foreach ($name in $fileNameList) {
    if (($file.name).Contains($name)) { remove-item $file.fullname}
  }
}

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If you have administrator rights to the system you will have to change the execution policy on powershell to allow .ps1 scripts to be ran. This only has to be done once for the user running .ps1 scripts, run powershell as administrator and copy/paste the below code to it.

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

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If you prefer to keep the ExecutionPolicy Restricted which requires the scripts be signed. Then run the below code in powershell or command prompt.

powershell -executionpolicy bypass -file C:\path\to\script.ps1

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