For simple Windows automation beyond BAT files, VBScript and Powershell might be worth a look. If you're wondering where to start first, VBScript+Windows Task Scheduler would be the first place I'd start. Copying a file with VBS can be as simple as:
Dim objFSO
Set objFSO = CreateObject ("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If objFSO.FileExists("C:\source\your_file.txt") Then
objFSO.CopyFile "C:\source\your_file.txt", "C:\destination\your_file.txt"
EndIf
As others have mentioned, the rd
command has the /s
switch to recursively remove sub-directories. You can combine it with the /q
switch to forcibly delete a sub-directory (and its contents) without prompting as so
rd /s /q c:\foobar
What everybody is missing is that rd
is not an exact replacement for deltree
as seemingly (almost) every page returned by Googling for windows deltree
would have you believe. The deltree
command worked for both directories and files, making it a single convenient, all-purpose deletion command. That is both of the following are valid:
deltree /y c:\foobar
deltree /y c:\baz.txt
However rd
(not surprisingly) only works for directories. As such only the first of these commands is valid while the second gives and error and leaves the file un-deleted:
rd /s /q c:\foobar
rd /s /q c:\baz.txt
Further, the del
command only works for files, not directories, so only the second command is valid while the first gives an error:
del /f /q c:\foobar
del /f /q c:\baz.txt
There is no built-in way to delete files and directories as could be done with deltree
. Using rd
and del
individually is inconvenient at best because it requires distinguishing whether a file-system object (file-/folder-name) is a file or directory which is not always possible or practical.
You can copy the deltree
command from a previous OS, however it will only work on 32-bit versions of Windows since it is a 16-bit DOS command (even in Windows 9x).
Another option is to create a batch-file that calls both del
and rd
; something like this:
::deltree.bat
@echo off
rd %* 2> nul
del %* 2> nul
You would call it as so:
deltree.bat /s /q /f c:\foobar
deltree.bat /s /q /f c:\baz.txt
This calls both rd
and del
, passing in the arguments and redirecting the output to nul
to avoid the error that one of them will invariably emit.
You will probably want to customize the behavior to accomodate or simplify parameters or allow error messages, but even so, it is not ideal and not a direct replacement for deltree
.
An alternative is to get a third-party tool, though finding one is a real exercise in search-query-crafting.
Best Answer
YOu can set the attributes of the files you want to keep to readonly and hidden first, delete the rest, and then reset the attributes of the hidden, readonly files back.
I used to do that quite often, and wrote a batch file that automated this:
It's probably OK just to use the hidden attribute, but I know that del doesn't touch hidden system files, so I set both. Better safe than sorry, IMO.
Based on a comment from Marcus: If you want to extend this to include subdirectories of the current directory, simply change both attrib lines to
and change the line between the two attrib lines to
That should work for most things you'd want except.bat to do.