I need help with below code as it is executing in root folder only whereas I want the code to look for files within sub folders as well.
for /F "tokens=*" %%A in (documents.txt) do (
copy %%A E:\Destination\
)
I suggest to use this command line in the batch file to copy all files with duplicating directory structure from source to destination directory.
for /F "eol=| delims=" %%I in (documentation.txt) do %SystemRoot%\System32\robocopy.exe "%~dp0." "E:\Destination" "%%~I" /S /NDL /NFL /NJH /NJS
It is assumed that the file documentation.txt contains a list of file names without path.
The command FOR reads one line after the other from file documentation.txt with skipping empty lines. The end of line character is modified from default ; to | using option eol=| to be able copying also files of which name starts unusually with a semicolon. No file name can contain a vertical bar anywhere. The line splitting behavior on spaces/tabs is disabled by using option delims= which defines in this case an empty list of string delimiters. Therefore file names with one or more space even at beginning of file name read from file are assigned unmodified to loop variable I. The option tokens=* removes leading spaces/tabs from the lines read from text file. A file name can begin with one or more spaces although such file names are unusual.
FOR runs for each file name the executable ROBOCOPY with directory of the batch file as source folder path and E:\Destination as destination folder path. ROBOCOPY interprets a \ left of one more \ or " as escape character. For that reason the source and destination folder paths should never end with a backslash as this would result in " being interpreted not as end of folder path, but everything up to next " in command line. For that reason . is appended to %~dp0 because of %~dp0 always expands to batch file folder path ending with a backslash. The dot at end of batch file folder path references the current folder of batch file folder. In other words with batch file stored in C:\Temp the batch file folder can be referenced with C:\Temp\ as done with %~dp0 but not possible with ROBOCOPY or with C:\Temp\. as done with %~dp0. or with just C:\Temp or with C:\Temp\\ as done with %~dp0\ which would also work with ROBOCOPY. See the Microsoft documentation about Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces for details.
Remove %~dp0 to use current folder as source folder instead of batch file folder.
The ROBOCOPY option /S results in searching in source folder and all its subfolders for the file and copy each found file to destination folder with duplicating the source folder structure in destination folder.
The other ROBOCOPY options are just for not printing list of created directories, list of copied files, header and summary.
Here is an alternative command line for this task copying all files from source directory tree into destination directory without creating subdirectories. So all copied files are finally in specified destination directory.
for /F "eol=| delims=" %%I in (documentation.txt) do for /F "delims=" %%J in ('dir "%~dp0%%~I" /A-D-H /B /S 2^>nul') do copy /B /Y "%%J" "E:\Destination\" >nul
The inner FOR starts for each file name assigned to loop variable I of outer FOR one more command process in background with %ComSpec% /c and the DIR command line appended as additional arguments. So executed is for each file name in documentation.txt with Windows installed into C:\Windows for example:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c dir "C:\Batch File Path\Current File Name.ext" /A-D-H /B /S 2>nul
The command DIR executed by second cmd.exe in background searches
in directory of the batch file
and all its subdirectories because of option /S
only for non-hidden files because of option /A-D-H (attribute not directory and not hidden)
with the specified file name
and outputs in bare format because of option /B
just the names of the found files with full path because of option /S.
It is possible that DIR cannot find a file matching these criteria at all in which case it would output an error message to handle STDERR of the background command process. This error message is suppressed by redirecting it with 2>nul to device NUL.
Read the Microsoft article about Using command redirection operators for an explanation of 2>nul. The redirection operator > must be escaped with caret character ^ on FOR command line to be interpreted as literal character when Windows command interpreter processes this command line before executing command FOR which executes the embedded dir command line with using a separate command process started in background.
The inner FOR captures everything written to handle STDOUT of started background command process and processes this output line by line after started cmd.exe terminated itself after finishing execution of DIR.
The inner FOR assigns each full qualified file name to specified loop variable J without any modification because of option delims= and runs next the command COPY to copy that file as binary file to destination directory with automatically overwriting an existing file in destination directory with same file name. The success message output by COPY to handle STDOUT is redirected with >nul to device NUL to suppress it. An error message would be output by COPY. An error occurs if destination directory does not exist, or the destination directory is write-protected, or an existing file with same name is write-protected due to a read-only attribute or file permissions, or source file is opened by an application with sharing read access denied, or an existing destination file is opened by an application with sharing write access denied.
For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.
call /? ... for an explanation of %~dp0 referencing drive and path of argument 0 which is the full qualified path of the batch file currently processed by cmd.exe.
copy /?
dir /?
for /?
robocopy /?
How to go though a directory tree and delete all directories unless they contain a file with a particular file extension?
I tried Robocopy thinking the folders were empty. But all the folders have hidden files. So I need something that will take every folder in a directory that does not have a .pdf for example in it and delete it.
The task is to delete all directories/folders not containing a PDF file and also not containing a subdirectory/subfolder containing a PDF file. Let us look on an example to better understand the directory/folder deletion task.
The directory C:\Temp contains following subfolders and files:
Folder 1
Subfolder A
File 1A.txt
Subfolder B
File 1B.txt
Subfolder C
File 1C.pdf
File 1.cmd
Folder 2
Subfolder A
Subfolder B
File 2B.pdf
Subfolder C
File 2C.pdf
File 2.jpg
Folder 3
Subfolder A
File 3A.log
Subfolder B
File 3.doc
Last Folder & End
Subfolder A
Last File A.xls
Subfolder B
Subfolder C
Last File C.pdf
A folder is formatted bold. A hidden folder is formatted bold and italic. A hidden file is formatted italic.
The wanted folders and files after running the batch file should be:
Folder 1
Subfolder C
File 1C.pdf
File 1.cmd
Folder 2
Subfolder B
File 2B.pdf
Subfolder C
File 2C.pdf
File 2.jpg
Last Folder & End
Subfolder C
Last File C.pdf
This result can be achieved by executing following batch file:
#echo off
goto MainCode
:ProcessFolder
for /F "delims=" %%I in ('dir "%~1" /AD /B 2^>nul') do call :ProcessFolder "%~1\%%I"
if exist "%~1\*.pdf" goto :EOF
for /F "delims=" %%I in ('dir "%~1" /AD /B 2^>nul') do goto :EOF
if /I "%~1\" == "%BatchFilePath%" goto :EOF
rd /Q /S "%~1"
goto :EOF
:MainCode
setlocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion
set "BatchFilePath=%~dp0"
if exist "C:\Temp\" cd /D "C:\Temp" & call :ProcessFolder "C:\Temp"
endlocal
Doing something recursively on a directory tree requires having a subroutine/function/procedure which calls itself recursively. In the batch file above this is ProcessFolder.
Please read the answer on Where does GOTO :EOF return to? The command goto :EOF is used here to exit the subroutine ProcessFolder and works only as wanted with enabled command extensions. FOR and CALL as used here require also enabled command extensions.
The main code of the batch file first enables explicitly the command extensions required for this batch file and disables delayed environment variable expansion to process correct also folders with an exclamation mark in name. This is the default environment on Windows, but it is better here to explicitly set this environment because the batch file contains the command RD with the options /Q /S which can be really very harmful on execution from within wrong environment or directory.
The subroutine ProcessFolder is not at end of the batch file as usual with a goto :EOF above to avoid an unwanted fall through to the command lines of the subroutine after finishing the entire task. For safety reasons the subroutine is in the middle of the batch file. So if a user tries to execute the batch file on Windows 95/98 with no support for command extensions nothing bad happens because first goto MainCode is executed successfully as expected, but SETLOCAL command line, calling the subroutine and last also ENDLOCAL fail and so no directory was deleted by this batch file designed for Windows with cmd.exe as Windows command processor instead of command.com.
The main code sets also current directory to the directory to process. So C:\Temp itself is never deleted by this code because of Windows prevents the deletion of a directory which is the current directory of any running process or contains a file opened by a running process with file access permission set to prevent other processes to delete the file while being opened by the process.
Next is called subroutine ProcessFolder with argument C:\Temp to process this folder recursively.
Last the initial environment is restored which includes also initial current directory on starting the batch file if this directory still exists.
The command for /D is usually used to do something on all subdirectories of a directory. But this is not possible here because FOR always ignores directories and files with hidden attribute set. For that reason it is necessary to use command DIR to get a list of all subdirectories in current directory including directories with hidden attribute set.
The command line dir "%~1" /AD /B 2>nul is executed by FOR in a separate command process started with cmd.exe /C in background. This is one reason why this batch file is quite slow. The other reason is calling the subroutine again and again which cause internally in cmd.exe to save and restore environment again and again.
Please read the Microsoft article about Using Command Redirection Operators for an explanation of 2>nul. The redirection operator > must be escaped with caret character ^ on FOR command line to be interpreted as literal character when Windows command interpreter processes this command line before executing command FOR which executes the embedded dir command line with using a separate command process started in background.
For each subdirectory in a directory the subroutine ProcessFolder calls itself. The first FOR loop in the subroutine is left if a directory does not contain one more subdirectory.
Then the subroutine checks in current directory if there is at least one *.pdf file. The IF condition used here is true even if the directory contains only a hidden PDF file. In this case the subroutine is exited without doing anything as this directory contains definitely a PDF file and therefore must be kept according to the requirements of the folder deletion task.
Next is checked if the current directory still contains at least one subdirectory as in this case the current directory must be also kept as one of its subdirectories contains at least one PDF file.
Last the subroutine checks if the current directory contains by chance the batch file as this directory must be also kept to finish the processing of the batch file.
Otherwise the current directory is deleted with all files on not containing a PDF file and no subdirectories and also not the currently running batch file as long as Windows does not prevent the deletion of the directory because of missing permissions or a sharing access violation.
Please note that the batch file does not delete other files in a directory which is not deleted as it can be seen also on the example.
For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.
call /?
cd /?
dir /?
echo /?
endlocal /?
for /?
goto /?
if /?
rd /?
setlocal /?
The base directory has about 20 subdirectories. Each subdirectory has many files. I need to move all the files from specific subdirectories to a newly created subdirectory in base directory at once.
For example I have in base directory D:\Documents the following directories:
D:\Documents\12345\data\images\
D:\Documents\12345\test\
D:\Documents\12345\documents\
I need to move all the files under images into newly to create directory D:\Documents\images in base directory.
Can you please help me in this?
This small batch file makes the job:
#echo off
md D:\Documents\images 2>nul
for /F "delims=" %%I in ('dir D:\Documents\* /A-D /B /S 2^>nul ^| %SystemRoot%\System32\findstr.exe /B /I /R /C:D:\\Documents\\..*\\images\\ 2^>nul') do (
move /Y "%%I" "D:\Documents\images\%%~nxI"
rd "%%~dpI" 2>nul
)
The batch file first creates the target directory with suppressing the error message output by MD if this directory already exists. It is expected by this batch file that it is possible to create this directory and move the files into this directory without any additional checks.
Command DIR searches in D:\Documents and all it subdirectories because of /S for just files because of /A-D (attribute not directory) and outputs them in bare format because of /B which means just the file name with file extension and in this case also with full path because of /S.
It is possible that DIR cannot find any file in entire D:\Documents directory tree. The error message output in this case to handle STDERR is suppressed by redirecting it to device NUL using 2>nul after command DIR.
This output by DIR is redirected as input for command FINDSTR used as filter. It runs a regular expression find searching for lines starting with D:\Documents\ having at least one more character before \images\ must be found too. So it ignores the files in directory D:\Documents\images\ in case of this directory already exists with files on starting the batch file. But it does not filter out files in for example D:\Documents\12345\data\images\Subfolder\ as this regular expression does not check if \images\ is found at end of path.
It is possible that FINDSTR does not find any line (file name) matching the regular expression. The error message output in this case is suppressed by using 2>nul after command FINDSTR.
The command line with DIR and FINDSTR is executed by FOR in a separate command process started with cmd.exe /C in background without a visible window. For that reason the redirection operators > and | must be escaped with ^ to be interpreted first as literal characters by the Windows command interpreter on parsing the entire FOR command line before execution of FOR.
The lines output by the command line with DIR and FINDSTR to handle STDOUT in separate command process is captured by FOR and then processed line by line. With delims= the default behavior of splitting each line up into tokens using space and horizontal tab as delimiters is disabled by specifying an empty delimiters list.
The command MOVE moves the found file to D:\Documents\images\ with overwriting a file with same name in that directory.
The command RD removes the directory of just moved file if this directory is empty now after moving the file. Otherwise on directory not yet being empty an error message is output by command RD to handle STDERR which is suppressed using once again 2>nul.
For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.
dir /?
echo /?
findstr /?
for /?
md /?
move /?
rd /?
Read also the Microsoft article about Using Command Redirection Operators.
I have written the following .bat file, and it runs perfectly on my Windows 2000 machine, but will not run on my Windows 7 or Windows XP machines. Basically it just loops through the current directory and runs a checksum program which returns the checksum. The output of the program is saved to a text file and then formatted to remove the checksum of the output file.
#Echo Off
for /r %%f in (*.txt) do crc32sum.exe %%f >> all_checksums.txt
ren all_checksums.txt old.txt
findstr /v /e /c:"all_checksums.txt" old.txt > all_checksums.txt
del old.txt
When I run this file on my Win2k PC with a bunch of text files and the crc32sum.exe in a folder, it outputs the file. On other machines it outputs a blank file. I turned Echo on and kept only the for loop line and found that the output from executing the crc32sum.exe is nothing. If you manually run the crc32sum.exe file it outputs the checksum no problem.
Any ideas as to how to fix this?
EDIT: Here is a link to the software: http://www.di-mgt.com.au/src/digsum-1.0.1.zip
EDIT2: New development, it seems that the file works if the path of the folder has no spaces in it i.e. C:\temp or C:\inetpub\ftproot or C:\users\admin\Desktop\temp. Does anyone know how I can make this work with paths that have spaces? %%~f doesnt work it says unexpected.
Try this modified batch code which worked on Windows XP SP3 x86:
#echo off
goto CheckOutput
rem Command DEL does not terminate with an exit code greater 0
rem if the deletion of a file failed. Therefore the output to
rem stderr must be evaluated to find out if deletion was
rem successful or (for a single file) the file existence is
rem checked once again. For details read on Stack Overflow
rem the answer http://stackoverflow.com/a/33403497/3074564
rem The deletion of the file was successful if file created
rem from output message has size 0 and therefore the temp
rem file can be deleted and calculation of the CRC32 sums
rem can be started.
:DeleteOutput
del /F "all_checksums.txt" >nul 2>"%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp"
for %%E in ("%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp") do set "FileSize=%%~zE"
if "%FileSize%" == "0" (
set "FileSize="
del "%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp"
goto CalcCRC32
)
set "FileSize="
echo %~nx0: Failed to delete file %CD%\all_checksums.txt
echo.
type "%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp"
del "%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp"
echo.
echo Is this file opened in an application?
echo.
set "Retry=N"
set /P "Retry=Retry (N/Y)? "
if /I "%Retry%" == "Y" (
set "Retry="
cls
goto CheckOutput
)
set "Retry="
goto :EOF
:CheckOutput
if exist "all_checksums.txt" goto DeleteOutput
:CalcCRC32
for /R %%F in (*.txt) do (
if /I not "%%F" == "%CD%\all_checksums.txt" (
crc32sum.exe "%%F" >>"all_checksums.txt"
)
)
The output file in current directory is deleted if already existing from a previous run. Extra code is added to verify if deletion was successful and informing the user about a failed deletion with giving the user the possibility to retry after closing the file in an application if that is the reason why deletion failed.
The FOR command searches because of option /R recursive in current directory and all its subdirectories for files with extension txt. The name of each found file with full path always without double quotes is hold in loop variable F for any text file found in current directory or any subdirectory.
The CRC32 sum is calculated by 32-bit console application crc32sum in current directory for all text files found with the exception of the output file all_checksums.txt in current directory. The output of this small application is redirected into file all_checksums.txt with appending the single output line to this file.
It is necessary to enclose the file name with path in double quotes because even with no *.txt file containing a space character or one of the special characters &()[]{}^=;!'+,`~ in its name, the path of the file could contain a space or one of those characters.
For the files
C:\Temp\test 1.txt
C:\Temp\test 2.txt
C:\Temp\test_3.txt
C:\Temp\TEST\123-9.txt
C:\Temp\TEST\abc.txt
C:\Temp\TEST\hello.txt
C:\Temp\TEST\hellon.txt
C:\Temp\Test x\test4.txt
C:\Temp\Test x\test5.txt
the file C:\Temp\all_checksums.txt contains after batch execution:
f44271ac *test 1.txt
624cbdf9 *test 2.txt
7ce469eb *test_3.txt
cbf43926 *123-9.txt
352441c2 *abc.txt
0d4a1185 *hello.txt
38e6c41a *hellon.txt
1b4289fa *test4.txt
f44271ac *test5.txt
For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.
cls /?
del /?
echo /?
for /?
goto /?
if /?
rem /?
set /?
type /?
One of the help pages output on running for /? informs about %~I, %~fI, %~dI, %~pI, %~nI, %~xI, %~sI, %~aI, %~tI, %~zI.
Using in a batch file f (in lower case) as loop variable and referencing it with %%~f is a syntax error as command processor expects next the loop variable. %%~ff would be right, but could be different to %%~fI (name of a file/folder with full path and extension without quotes) in comparison to %%~I (string without surrounding quotes).
It is not advisable to use (those) small letters as loop variable. It is better to use upper case letters or character # as loop variable. The loop variable and also those modifiers are case sensitive while nearly everything else in a batch file is case insensitive.
Say, there is a variable called %pathtofolder%, as it makes it clear it is a full path of a folder.
I want to delete every single file and subfolder in this directory, but not the directory itself.
But, there might be an error like 'this file/folder is already in use'... when that happens, it should just continue and skip that file/folder.
Is there some command for this?
rmdir is my all time favorite command for the job. It works for deleting huge files and folders with subfolders. A backup is not created, so make sure that you have copied your files safely before running this command.
RMDIR "FOLDERNAME" /S /Q
This silently removes the folder and all files and subfolders.
You can use this shell script to clean up the folder and files within C:\Temp source:
del /q "C:\Temp\*"
FOR /D %%p IN ("C:\Temp\*.*") DO rmdir "%%p" /s /q
Create a batch file (say, delete.bat) containing the above command. Go to the location where the delete.bat file is located and then run the command: delete.bat
The simplest solution I can think of is removing the whole directory with
RD /S /Q folderPath
Then creating this directory again:
MD folderPath
This will remove the folders and files and leave the folder behind.
pushd "%pathtofolder%" && (rd /s /q "%pathtofolder%" 2>nul & popd)
#ECHO OFF
SET THEDIR=path-to-folder
Echo Deleting all files from %THEDIR%
DEL "%THEDIR%\*" /F /Q /A
Echo Deleting all folders from %THEDIR%
FOR /F "eol=| delims=" %%I in ('dir "%THEDIR%\*" /AD /B 2^>nul') do rd /Q /S "%THEDIR%\%%I"
#ECHO Folder deleted.
EXIT
...deletes all files and folders underneath the given directory, but not the directory itself.
CD [Your_Folder]
RMDIR /S /Q .
You'll get an error message, tells you that the RMDIR command can't access the current folder, thus it can't delete it.
Update:
From this useful comment (thanks to Moritz Both), you may add && between, so RMDIR won't run if the CD command fails (e.g. mistyped directory name):
CD [Your_Folder] && RMDIR /S /Q .
From Windows Command-Line Reference:
/S: Deletes a directory tree (the specified directory and all its
subdirectories, including all files).
/Q: Specifies quiet mode. Does not prompt for confirmation when
deleting a directory tree. (Note that /q works only if /s is
specified.)
I use Powershell
Remove-Item c:\scripts\* -recurse
It will remove the contents of the folder, not the folder itself.
RD stands for REMOVE Directory.
/S : Delete all files and subfolders
in addition to the folder itself.
Use this to remove an entire folder tree.
/Q : Quiet - do not display YN confirmation
Example :
RD /S /Q C:/folder_path/here
Use Notepad to create a text document and copy/paste this:
rmdir /s/q "%temp%"
mkdir "%temp%"
Select Save As and file name:
delete_temp.bat
Save as type: All files and click the Save button.
It works on any kind of account (administrator or a standard user). Just run it!
I use a temporary variable in this example, but you can use any other! PS: For Windows OS only!
None of the answers as posted on 2018-06-01, with the exception of the single command line posted by foxidrive, really deletes all files and all folders/directories in %PathToFolder%. That's the reason for posting one more answer with a very simple single command line to delete all files and subfolders of a folder as well as a batch file with a more complex solution explaining why all other answers as posted on 2018-06-01 using DEL and FOR with RD failed to clean up a folder completely.
The simple single command line solution which of course can be also used in a batch file:
pushd "%PathToFolder%" 2>nul && ( rd /Q /S "%PathToFolder%" 2>nul & popd )
This command line contains three commands executed one after the other.
The first command PUSHD pushes current directory path on stack and next makes %PathToFolder% the current directory for running command process.
This works also for UNC paths by default because of command extensions are enabled by default and in this case PUSHD creates a temporary drive letter that points to that specified network resource and then changes the current drive and directory, using the newly defined drive letter.
PUSHD outputs following error message to handle STDERR if the specified directory does not exist at all:
The system cannot find the path specified.
This error message is suppressed by redirecting it with 2>nul to device NUL.
The next command RD is executed only if changing current directory for current command process to specified directory was successful, i.e. the specified directory exists at all.
The command RD with the options /Q and /S removes a directory quietly with all subdirectories even if the specified directory contains files or folders with hidden attribute or with read-only attribute set. The system attribute does never prevent deletion of a file or folder.
Not deleted are:
Folders used as the current directory for any running process. The entire folder tree to such a folder cannot be deleted if a folder is used as the current directory for any running process.
Files currently opened by any running process with file access permissions set on file open to prevent deletion of the file while opened by the running application/process. Such an opened file prevents also the deletion of entire folder tree to the opened file.
Files/folders on which the current user has not the required (NTFS) permissions to delete the file/folder which prevents also the deletion of the folder tree to this file/folder.
The first reason for not deleting a folder is used by this command line to delete all files and subfolders of the specified folder, but not the folder itself. The folder is made temporarily the current directory for running command process which prevents the deletion of the folder itself. Of course this results in output of an error message by command RD:
The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
File is the wrong term here as in reality the folder is being used by another process, the current command process which executed command RD. Well, in reality a folder is for the file system a special file with file attribute directory which explains this error message. But I don't want to go too deep into file system management.
This error message, like all other error messages, which could occur because of the three reasons written above, is suppressed by redirecting it with 2>nul from handle STDERR to device NUL.
The third command, POPD, is executed independently of the exit value of command RD.
POPD pops the directory path pushed by PUSHD from the stack and changes the current directory for running the command process to this directory, i.e. restores the initial current directory. POPD deletes the temporary drive letter created by PUSHD in case of a UNC folder path.
Note: POPD can silently fail to restore the initial current directory in case of the initial current directory was a subdirectory of the directory to clean which does not exist anymore. In this special case %PathToFolder% remains the current directory. So it is advisable to run the command line above not from a subdirectory of %PathToFolder%.
One more interesting fact:
I tried the command line also using a UNC path by sharing local directory C:\Temp with share name Temp and using UNC path \\%COMPUTERNAME%\Temp\CleanTest assigned to environment variable PathToFolder on Windows 7. If the current directory on running the command line is a subdirectory of a shared local folder accessed using UNC path, i.e. C:\Temp\CleanTest\Subfolder1, Subfolder1 is deleted by RD, and next POPD fails silently in making C:\Temp\CleanTest\Subfolder1 again the current directory resulting in Z:\CleanTest remaining as the current directory for the running command process. So in this very, very special case the temporary drive letter remains until the current directory is changed for example with cd /D %SystemRoot% to a local directory really existing. Unfortunately POPD does not exit with a value greater 0 if it fails to restore the initial current directory making it impossible to detect this very special error condition using just the exit code of POPD. However, it can be supposed that nobody ever runs into this very special error case as UNC paths are usually not used for accessing local files and folders.
For understanding the used commands even better, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read the help displayed for each command very carefully.
pushd /?
popd /?
rd /?
Single line with multiple commands using Windows batch file explains the operators && and & used here.
Next let us look on the batch file solution using the command DEL to delete files in %PathToFolder% and FOR and RD to delete the subfolders in %PathToFolder%.
#echo off
setlocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion
rem Clean the folder for temporary files if environment variable
rem PathToFolder is not defined already outside this batch file.
if not defined PathToFolder set "PathToFolder=%TEMP%"
rem Remove all double quotes from folder path.
set "PathToFolder=%PathToFolder:"=%"
rem Did the folder path consist only of double quotes?
if not defined PathToFolder goto EndCleanFolder
rem Remove a backslash at end of folder path.
if "%PathToFolder:~-1%" == "\" set "PathToFolder=%PathToFolder:~0,-1%"
rem Did the folder path consist only of a backslash (with one or more double quotes)?
if not defined PathToFolder goto EndCleanFolder
rem Delete all files in specified folder including files with hidden
rem or read-only attribute set, except the files currently opened by
rem a running process which prevents deletion of the file while being
rem opened by the application, or on which the current user has not
rem the required permissions to delete the file.
del /A /F /Q "%PathToFolder%\*" >nul 2>nul
rem Delete all subfolders in specified folder including those with hidden
rem attribute set recursive with all files and subfolders, except folders
rem being the current directory of any running process which prevents the
rem deletion of the folder and all folders above, folders containing a file
rem opened by the application which prevents deletion of the file and the
rem entire folder structure to this file, or on which the current user has
rem not the required permissions to delete a folder or file in folder tree
rem to delete.
for /F "eol=| delims=" %%I in ('dir "%PathToFolder%\*" /AD /B 2^>nul') do rd /Q /S "%PathToFolder%\%%I" 2>nul
:EndCleanFolder
endlocal
The batch file first makes sure that environment variable PathToFolder is really defined with a folder path without double quotes and without a backslash at the end. The backslash at the end would not be a problem, but double quotes in a folder path could be problematic because of the value of PathToFolder is concatenated with other strings during batch file execution.
Important are the two lines:
del /A /F /Q "%PathToFolder%\*" >nul 2>nul
for /F "eol=| delims=" %%I in ('dir "%PathToFolder%\*" /AD /B 2^>nul') do rd /Q /S "%PathToFolder%\%%I" 2>nul
The command DEL is used to delete all files in the specified directory.
The option /A is necessary to process really all files including files with the hidden attribute which DEL would ignore without using option /A.
The option /F is necessary to force deletion of files with the read-only attribute set.
The option /Q is necessary to run a quiet deletion of multiple files without prompting the user if multiple files should be really deleted.
>nul is necessary to redirect the output of the file names written to handle STDOUT to device NUL of which can't be deleted because of a file is currently opened or user has no permission to delete the file.
2>nul is necessary to redirect the error message output for each file which can't be deleted from handle STDERR to device NUL.
The commands FOR and RD are used to remove all subdirectories in specified directory. But for /D is not used because of FOR is ignoring in this case subdirectories with the hidden attribute set. For that reason for /F is used to run the following command line in a separate command process started in the background with %ComSpec% /c:
dir "%PathToFolder%\*" /AD /B 2>nul
DIR outputs in bare format because of /B the directory entries with attribute D, i.e. the names of all subdirectories in specified directory independent on other attributes like the hidden attribute without a path. 2>nul is used to redirect the error message output by DIR on no directory found from handle STDERR to device NUL.
The redirection operator > must be escaped with the caret character, ^, on the FOR command line to be interpreted as a literal character when the Windows command interpreter processes this command line before executing the command FOR which executes the embedded dir command line in a separate command process started in the background.
FOR processes the captured output written to handle STDOUT of a started command process which are the names of the subdirectories without path and never enclosed in double quotes.
FOR with option /F ignores empty lines which don't occur here as DIR with option /B does not output empty lines.
FOR would also ignore lines starting with a semicolon which is the default end of line character. A directory name can start with a semicolon. For that reason eol=| is used to define the vertical bar character as the end-of-line character which no directory or file can have in its name.
FOR would split up the line into substrings using space and horizontal tab as delimiters and would assign only the first space/tab delimited string to specified loop variable I. This splitting behavior is not wanted here because of a directory name can contain one or more spaces. Therefore delims= is used to define an empty list of delimiters to disable the line splitting behavior and get assigned to the loop variable, I, always the complete directory name.
Command FOR runs the command RD for each directory name without a path which is the reason why on the RD command line the folder path must be specified once again which is concatenated with the subfolder name.
For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.
del /?
dir /?
echo /?
endlocal /?
for /?
goto /?
if /?
rd /?
rem /?
set /?
setlocal /?
To delete file:
del PATH_TO_FILE
To delete folder with all files in it:
rmdir /s /q PATH_TO_FOLDER
To delete all files from specific folder (not deleting folder itself) is a little bit complicated. del /s *.* cannot delete folders, but removes files from all subfolder. So two commands are needed:
del /q PATH_TO_FOLDER\*.*
for /d %i in (PATH_TO_FOLDER\*.*) do #rmdir /s /q "%i"
You can do it by using the following command to delete all contents and the parent folder itself:
RMDIR [/S] [/Q] [drive:]path
#ECHO OFF
rem next line removes all files in temp folder
DEL /A /F /Q /S "%temp%\*.*"
rem next line cleans up the folder's content
FOR /D %%p IN ("%temp%\*.*") DO RD "%%p" /S /Q
I tried several of these approaches, but none worked properly.
I found this two-step approach on the site Windows Command Line:
forfiles /P %pathtofolder% /M * /C "cmd /c if #isdir==FALSE del #file"
forfiles /P %pathtofolder% /M * /C "cmd /c if #isdir==TRUE rmdir /S /Q #file"
It worked exactly as I needed and as specified by the OP.
I had following solution that worked for me:
for /R /D %A in (*node_modules*) do rmdir "%A" /S /Q
It removes all node modules folder from current directory and its sub-folders.
This is similar to solutions posted above, but i am still posting this here, just in case someone finds it useful
Use:
del %pathtofolder%\*.* /s /f /q
This deletes all files and subfolders in %pathtofolder%, including read-only files, and does not prompt for confirmation.