Purge a Directory in Windows automatically

Sometimes there is no easy way to tidy up a directory in windows. In Linux its as easy as using tmpwatch or find and rm.

Luckily there is a handy tool in the Windows Resource kit called "forfiles" which can do this for you with a one liner batch file.

Note: bloody microsoft changed the switches between Windows 2000 and 2003 so its slightly different. 

Windows 2000

Download forfiles for win2k from here

Place the executable somewhere in your path and create a batch file. An example is below which deletes files with extensions *.ctf in drive f and g older than 10 days. (ofcourse run forfiles /? for help).

Be wary of the syntax, it changed between win2k and win2003, case and no spaces are important in windows 2000 version.
-p = path, -m=search filter, -d=days older than X, -c=command to run forfiles -pf: -m*.ctf -d-10 -c"CMD /c del @FILE : date >= 10 days" forfiles -pg: -m*.ctf -d-10 -c"CMD /c del @FILE : date >= 10 days"
  Windows 2003

forfiles should be standard in windows 2003. The example below deletes all files in the specifed directory older than 7 days.
/p=path,  /s=recurse subdirectories, -m=search filter, -d=days older than X, -c=command to run forfiles /p P:Nexusdsxmlspool /s /m *.* /d -7 /c "cmd /c del @file : date >= 7 days"   

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