Deleting files older than n days using command FORFILES

It is always very challenging and energetic know some command line fun magically, as it is sometimes very easier and powerful tips to process commands that way. Here, I would like to say something this type of funny operations with Forfiles command in Windows Server 2003/ Windows Vista /Windows 7/ Windows 8 or higher. Forfiles can process files based on names, file extensions and file life cycle. It’s very easy to find files depending on our search criteria or all files in a directory/or including sub directories that are older than N^th days, or all documents in specific folder that have been changed since a specific date.

The forfiles command can be used with processing options to delete those files, or create a list of all files that match the search criteria.

Forfiles, Selects and executes a command on a file or set of files. This command enables batch processing of files. In conjunction with a SQL Server Agent job, we can easily use this command to delete old database backup files to remove dependencies on items such as SQL Server maintenance plans, the xp_cmdshell extended stored procedure, or VBScript objects. For example, the following command searches the directory c:\test and all its subdirectories for files with the .BAK extension that are older than 10 days

FORFILES /P C:\TEST\ /M .BAK /S /D -10

The parameter /p followed by a directory defines the starting directory, /s includes subdirectories in the search, /m filters the files and folders based on the search criteria, and /D defines the date or a time span.

For more details visit http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753551(v=ws.10).aspx#BKMK_examples