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David.P
Asked: 2021-06-12 10:40:29 +0800 CST

Delete all folders on all drives with "foo" OR "bar" in the folder name with batchfile

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I am trying to delete all folders on all drives with the above naming pattern, however only on the first folder level, i.e directly below the drive letter, like for example:

F:\this folder's name contains FOO and should be deleted

...without confirmation nor error message (e.g. in case no folders are found), with a batchfile.

I've found this: delete all folders with tmp in name using batch file and am wondering if the solution from there is a good starting point?

@echo off
set dir="c:\FOLDERLOCATION\"
FOR /D /R %dir% %%X IN (*.tmp) DO RMDIR /S /Q "%%X"
pause
exit
batch-file ms-dos windows-batch

1 Answers

  1. Read and follow FOR - Conditionally perform a command several times.. You could apply either FOR-Folders, or FOR-Command Results as follows:

    FOR-Folders (disadvantages: case insensitive; wildcards allow no regex-like pattern so we need to run a loop more times).

    @echo off
set "dir=c:\FOLDERLOCATION\"
pushd "%dir%"
::                          ↓↓↓↓                      echo for debugging
FOR /D /R %%X IN (*foo*) DO echo RMDIR /S /Q "%%~fX"
FOR /D /R %%X IN (*bar*) DO echo RMDIR /S /Q "%%~fX"
::                          ↑↑↑↑                      echo for debugging
popd
pause

    FOR-Command Results in combination with findstr (advantages: findstr independently allows both case sensitive and regex-like search pattern):

    @echo off
set "dir=c:\FOLDERLOCATION\"
FOR /F "delims=" %%X IN ('dir /B/S /A:D "%dir%" ^| findstr /I "foo|bar"') DO 2>NUL echo RMDIR /S /Q "%%~fX"
:: ECHO in above line merely for debugging
pause

    A disadvantage is that dir list is generated statically so we need to redirect error messages using 2>NUL

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