Anyone knows how to create a batch file to clean up a folder based on a certain number of days? I want to delete files older than 7 days but I don't know the syntax for date. I know how to delete files using the batch utility.

- Sonya

Hi
I wrote a batch for WinXP to delete files older than a certain number of days, as I'm english I guess than I would have to change the date variables in the batch file.
ie this command typed at the dos prompt on my system "date /t" produces "21/12/2004".
Your would produce "12/21/2004" is that correct if not what format doe's it produce.
I'm not familar with Windows 2003 so I think it might work ok on your system.

Calculating past/future dates and differences between them is not an easy task for a batch file.

If you're interested, here's a Perl script that would be cleaner than the batch file. This uses the parent directory as its starting point and does a recursive desent into each subdir deleting any file that was modified 7 or more days ago.

#!perl -w

use strict;
use File::Find;

my $dir = 'path/to/parent/dir';

finddepth(\&file_be_gone, $dir);

sub file_be_gone {
    return if /^\.\.?/;
    if ((_M $_) >= 7) { unlink $File::Find::name; }
}

Oops, I made a typo.

change:
   if ((_M $_)

to:
   if ((-M $_)