Hi, I have a system that sends watchlists of share volatility data derived out of stock prices to users via email and I'm upgrading from Win2k to WinXP. It uses a program called automailer to send the watchlist data. It copies in the user's recipient email address and message into the "automailer" directory plus their watchlist as an html attachment into the "automailer/send" directory and then it fires up the program to send the message with the html watchlist attached. After each user, it deletes the recipient/message/watchlist attachment from the "automailer" and "automailer/send" directory and goes on to copy the data for the next user. I have a batch job to do the deleting as follows: @echo Off del c:\progra~1\automa~1\message.txt del c:\progra~1\automa~1\Rcpts.csv del c:\progra~1\automa~1\Send\FKI*.* del c:\progra~1\automa~1\Send\Watch*.* :exit where progra~1 is the Program Files directory and automa~1 is the Automailer directory. This worked fine in Win2KPro but doesn't seem to work under XPPro. I think XP uses full directory names so I changed it to @echo Off del c:\Program Files\AutoMailer XL\message.txt del c:\Program Files\AutoMailer XL\Rcpts.csv del c:\Program Files\AutoMailer XL\Send\Watch*.* :exit but it still doesn't work. Can anyone tell me what is the problem here. I seem to have run out of ideas.. Thanks Pavesa

If you are using long file names try enclosing the path in double quotes. Other wise the space before XL is interpreted as a delimiter. del "c:\Program Files\AutoMailer XL\message.txt" Stuart

Hi Stuart I just tried that and it seems partly to work.The explicitly addressed files are fine, but the wildcards don't seem to work del "c:\progra~1\automa~1\message.txt" del "c:\progra~1\automa~1\Rcpts.csv" are deleted, but del c:\progra~1\automa~1\Send\FKI*.* del c:\progra~1\automa~1\Send\Watch*.* are not. Is there any particular format for using wildcards in XP? Thanks Pavesa

Stuart is right, as usual. 2K & XP both CAN use the truncated 8.3 names, but both are inconsistent in their handling. To be safe use LFNs with quotes: del "c:\Program Files\AutoMailer XL\*.ext" ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Hi Stuart and Mechanix2Go Yes, I used the extension and it now works fine. Looks like MS decided *.* was sufficiently bad form that they've put a blanket prohibition.. what an illiberal world XP is! thanks for the help Pavesa