The dos “del” command allows you to delete using wild cards – so for example “dev 2009-07-*” would erase any files starting with “2009-07-”; However this doesn’t work with folders- so it fell to the rd (remove directory) command- but this doesn’t support wild cards (I’m assuming for safety- to stop you permanently erasing 100’s of folders and their contents accidently- remember there’s no recycle bin when you delete from the command line!).

To get around this I created a simple Batch file which accepted a wildcard as a parameter, then removes all those folders at the current level (it wont check recursivly). Just in case this is of use to anyone else, here’s the code;

REM - performs a remove directory, with wildcard matching - example ; rd-wildcard 2007-*
dir %1 /b >loglist.txt
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
for /f %%a in (./loglist.txt) do (
	rd /s /q %%a
)
del /q loglist.txt
endlocal

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