! USING THIS WILL DELETE FILES
! PLEASE BE CAREFUL - MAKE BACKUPS
! ENSURE YOU TEST WITH --test FIRST

Purge Old Files

A small tool to delete files older than x number of days and to optionally delete any folders that have become/are empty.

You can download the source and hit build, or the latest exe is available here: [https://github.com/mark-s/PurgeOldFiles/releases/latest]

Prerequisites

This requires .net 4.6 to be installed.

Available Options

--test will not delete anything and only show a list of what would have been deleted (watch for the two dashes -- before test!)
Do this before you actually delete any files so you can check the dates etc are correct and the results are as expected

-d or --days is used like: -d 7 eg: delete files older than 7 days

You must chose one of these:
--created checks the creation date of the files.
--modified checks the last modified date of the files.

And chose one of these:
--allEmptyFolders will delete all empty folders found after deleteing the old files.
--emptiedFolders will clean up emptied folders after deleting old files from them, and ignore any empty folders that were there and empty before we ran the program.
--noDeleteFolders doesn't delete any folders - empty or otherwise!

Examples

To get usage instructions just omit any arguments
PurgeOldFiles.exe

Testing (DO THIS FIRST):

• Just show me what would be deleted, but don't delete anything! [--test]
  PurgeOldFiles.exe "c:\SomeFolder\withOldFiles" --test -d 7 --created --deleteEmptyFolders

Deleting old files and handling empty folders:

• Delete files with a modified date older than 7 days and ALL empty sub-folders:
  PurgeOldFiles.exe "c:\SomeFolder\withOldFiles" -d 7 --modified --deleteEmptyFolders

• Delete files with a created date older than 7 days and ALL empty sub-folders:
  PurgeOldFiles.exe "c:\SomeFolder\withOldFiles" -d 7 --created --deleteEmptyFolders

• Delete old files and any emptied sub-folders:
  PurgeOldFiles.exe "c:\SomeFolder\withOldFiles" -d 7 --created --emptiedFolders

• Delete old files but don't delete any folders
  PurgeOldFiles.exe "c:\SomeFolder\withOldFiles" -d 7 --created --noDeleteFolders

All Arguments

Flag	Details
folder to clean	Required. Folder to work on. Must be the first argument
-d, --days	Required. Delete all files older then x days
--test	(Default: false) Test run only - don't delete anything!
--help	Display this help screen.
--version	Display version information.
One of the following is required
--created	(Default: false) Use file Created date
--modified	(Default: true) Use file Modified date
One of the following is required
--emptiedFolders	Required. (Default: false) Delete Empty Folders if empty after deleting old folders
--allEmptyFolders	Required. (Default: false) Delete Empty Folders if empty after deleting old folders
--noDeleteFolders	Required. (Default: false) Delete Empty Folders if empty after deleting old folders

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details

Disclaimer

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.