Delete all folders except.... (*.BAT)

Question

I would like to delete all folders except MYFOLDER found in a parent directory but I cant get it done?

for %%i in ("C:\Parent") do if not "%%i"=="MYFOLDER" del /f /q "%%i

could somebody please check the code?

(I'm using *.bat)

Leena

Please check social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/scriptcenter/en-US/… – Procedure

Do you like to delete files or folders? If you want to delete folders, should use RD instead DEL. – Nationalism

Answer 1

This should help you:

for /d %%i in ("C:\Parent\*") do if /i not "%%~nxi"=="MYFOLDER" del /s /q "%%i"

Lynettalynette

Can you explain what %%~nxi stands for? It doesn't work for me, but %%i does. – Adlai

rd for folder i guess. – Repp

Answer 2

Dir all folders and check one by one if it is not MYFOLDER, if is not - delete it. Please remove echo when running the real job.

for /d %%i in (C:\Parent\*) do (
    if /i "%%i" NEQ ".exe" echo rd /S /Q %%i
)

Procedure

Note that you spare yourself a lot of pain if you just use for /d instead of iterating over dir output with for /f. – Neuburger

Yeah, sorry, should be /F. – Procedure

Answer 3

Or simply copy MYFOLDER to a temp folder, delete all files, and copy back MYFOLDER. Unless MYFOLDER is huge and takes time to copy, this should work just as good.

Otto