Tool

By Bryan Keadle

We keep a number of logs and various backup files. These files can get dated, and I wanted an easy way to be able to schedule a task to run that would prune these files based on age. My utility, (Del)ete (Days) (Old) (DelDaysOld.exe) does just that.

By default, you specify a root directory to start from, and it will process all subdirectories, deleting files older than the number of days you've specified. For more granular control, an .INI can be created like this to provide the indicated options:

[Settings]
;=== Multiple directories specified, delimited by pipe delimiter
Dir2Process=Dir1 | Dir2 | Dir3 | ...

;=== file specifications, delimited by pipe
FileMasks=*.~*|~*.*|*.??~|*.--?|*.tmp|*._mp|*._mp|*.old|*.bak|*.syd|*.chk|*.gid|mscreate.dir|0???????.nch|*.dmp

;=== Confirm deletions
ConfirmDel=Yes|No

;=== number to specify the number of subdirectories deep to process. Default "*" is to process all subdirectories
Depth=*
;=== Age of files' timelimit (defined below) to delete. Example below specifies to delete files that are 0 years, 14 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds old
TimeLimitYdHms=0:14:0:0:0

;=== Timelimit defined by Created or Modified or Accessed date
TimeField=Created|Modified|Accessed

Enjoy!

DelDaysOld (Directory) (Days_Old) [CREATED|MODIFIED|ACCESSED] [INI=Path_to_IniFile] [QUIET] [NOCONFIRM]

PARAM1:

    Root directory to start from

PARAM2:

    DaysOld # days, or Y:d:H:m:s format (Y:d:H:m:s)

OPTIONS:

    CREATED|MODIFIED|ACCESSED - Days old based on which specified time stamp (DEFAULT=MODIFIED)

    INI=Path_to_IniFile - Redirects to alternate INI file. If specified, other command parameters are ignored.

    QUIET - Suppress completed message box

    NOCONFIRM - Bypass confirmation prompt

EXAMPLE:

    DelDaysOld 14 ACCESSED INI=C:\Files2Delete.ini

To process multiple directories or specify a filemask other than *.*, use .INI to configure the options.