How to delete all files from "Output" folder using batch script? - batch-file

Question

I have a folder structure as below:
L:\MyProject\Extract\
Activity Input
**output**
SSIS
Results
Headers
Account Input
**output**
SSIS
Results
Headers
Balance Input
**output**
SSIS
Results
.
.
.
Here, I need to find output folder and delete all files present inside each "output" folder. I am using following script:
SET FolderPath=%1
for /f "usebackq" %%a in (`"dir %FolderPath% /ad/b/s output"`) do SET Folder="%%a"
del %Folder%\*.* /Q
But using above script, I am able to delete files which are present in "%%a"(last path of output folder). How to do it recursively...? Or is there any array concept to store all paths where output folder is present?

Answer 1

I see three problems in your code.
First, the for loop does not find the output subdirs under FolderPath, but iterates over all the subdirs of FolderPath.
One way to solve this is to specify
for /f "usebackq" %%a in (`dir "%FolderPath%\output" /ad/b/s`) do
Note that I have moved the quotes, just to prepare for the case of names with spaces, which was your second problem. You might further simplify it with
for /f "usebackq delims=" %%a in (`dir "%~1\output" /ad/b/s`) do
note that delims avoids spaces work as delimiters and %~1 removes the quotes of the parameter
And finally, the for loop, in each iteration, just sets the Folder variable, it does not invoke the del command, that is placed outside the loop.
One easy way to solve this problem is to invoke the del command on %%a without setting the variable folder
for /f "usebackq delims=" %%a in (`dir "%~1\output" /ad/b/s`) do del %%a\* /q

Answer 2

You could use the find command to find all subdirectories of the current directory.
To list files in all directories named Output:
find . -name Output -type d|find -type f -exec ls {} \;
To delete all files in directories named Output:
find . -name Output -type d|find -type f -exec rm {} \;