I have a simple batch program that creates a directory named MMDDYYYY and makes a backup of several files that it puts in that directory. Since I am running out of HD space, I wanted to add a section of code to the beginning of the batch file so that it would delete the oldest directory. (i.e so if the directories were 05252003 05302003 and 06062003 , it would delete the directory named 05252003 ) I'm really new to batch files (and DOS really). Thanks in advance for your help guys

If you know about batch files, im sure you know dos commands. To delete files in dos, you use the DEL command. Try putting this into the start: DEL x:\05252003\*.* this will delete the files in the directory But the name of the directory will still be there when you types dir or wathever. Sorry about my bad english! NOTE: X: is the drive letter. Very often C:

Thanks for the reply, but thats not exactly what I was looking for. I was hoping to figure out how to scan through all of the directories to figure out which file was the oldest (i.e. smallest number in the format MMDDYYYY)

The code below will do what you need (it will only run on NT, 2000, XP): The code assumes that your MMDDYYY directories are in c:\Backups. In case the code wraps lines, it should be in two lines: second line starts with "rd" Also, there are spaces between the /f and the %%i, and between each of the /b, /ad, /o-d. for /f %%i in ('dir c:\Backups /b /ad /o-d') do set OldestDir=%%i rd /s /q c:\Backups\%OldestDir% Enjoy!

Thanks for the help, it worked great