Delete files by Specifying directory

The easiest solution is making the directory on which to delete files like C:\Temp\Test temporarily the active directory.

@echo off setlocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion rem Size is in bytes set "min.size=100000" set "FullBatchFileName=%~f0" pushd "C:\Temp\Test" rem Do nothing if the command line above fails unexpected. if errorlevel 1 goto EndBatch for /F "eol=| delims=" %%I in ('dir * /A-D-H /B /OS 2^>nul') do if not "%FullBatchFileName%" == "%%~fI" if %%~zI LSS %min.size% ( del "%%I" ) else goto DeletionDone :DeletionDone popd :EndBatch endlocal 

The DIR command line is executed by FOR in a separate command process started with cmd.exe /C in background and FOR captures all lines output by DIR to handle STDOUT. An error message output by DIR to handle STDERR on finding not any non-hidden file in current directory is redirected with 2>nul to device NUL to suppress it.

Read also the Microsoft article about Using Command Redirection Operators for an explanation of 2>nul. The redirection operator > must be escaped with caret character ^ on FOR command line to be interpreted as literal character when Windows command interpreter processes this command line before executing command FOR which executes the embedded dir command line with using a separate command process started in background.

The DIR option /OS results in getting the list of non-hidden files output by DIR ordered by size with smallest first and largest last.

FOR would skip lines starting with a semicolon which means it would skip files which file name starts with ; which is in general possible. This is avoided by specifying with eol=| the vertical bar as end of line character which no file name can contain.

FOR would split up the lines into substring using normal space and horizontal tab as delimiter and would assign only first substring to loop variable I. File names can contain one or more spaces. Therefore delims= is used to define an empty list of delimiters which disable the line splitting behavior completely and get assigned to loop variable I the entire file name.

The IF condition if not "%FullBatchFileName%" == "%%~fI" compares case-sensitive the full qualified name of the batch file (drive + path + name + extension) with full qualified name of current file. This condition is only true if the current file is not the currently running batch file.

The next IF condition if %%~zI LSS %min.size% compares the file size of current file converted to a 32-bit signed integer with the specified file size also converted to a 32-bit signed integer. This file size comparison fails on files with 2 GiB or more as such a large file exceeds the maximum positive 32-bit signed integer value 2147483647.

The FOR loop is exited with goto DeletionDone on first line having a file size equal or greater the specified minimum size because of all further files output by DIR have definitely a file size equal or greater than the specified minimum size because of being output ordered by size from smallest to largest.

For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.

• call /? ... explains %~f0 ... full qualified file name of argument 0 - the currently executed batch file.
• dir /?
• echo /?
• endlocal /?
• for /?
• goto /?
• if /?
• popd /?
• pushd /?
• rem /?
• set /?
• setlocal /?