Forfiles

forfiles [/p Path] [/m SearchMask] [/s] [/c Command] [/d[{+ | -}] [{MM/DD/YYYY | DD}]]

/p Path

Specifies the Path on which you want to start searching. The default folder is the current working directory, which you specify by typing a period (.).

/m SearchMask

Searches files according to SearchMask. The default SearchMask is *.*.

/s

Instructs forfiles to search in subdirectories.

/c Command

Runs the specified Command on each file. You must wrap command strings with spaces in quotation marks. The default Command is "cmd /c echo @file".

/d[{+ | -}] [{MM/DD/YYYY | DD}]

Selects files with a date greater than or equal to (+) or less than or equal to (-) the specified date, where MM/DD/YYYY is the specified date and DD is the current date minus DD days. If you do not specify + or -, + is used. The valid range for DD is 0 - 32768.

/?

Displays help at the command prompt.

• Forfiles is most commonly used in batch files.
  
  
• Forfiles /s is similar to dir /s.
  
  
• The following table list the variables that you can use in the /cCommand command string.
  
  

   

  Variable	Description
  @file	File name
  @fname	File name without extension
  @ext	File extension
  @path	Full path of the file
  @relpath	Relative path of the file
  @isdir	Evaluates to TRUE if a file type is a directory, otherwise it evaluates to FALSE
  @fsize	File size in bytes
  @fdate	Last modified date stamp on the file
  @ftime	Last modified time stamp on the file

• With forfiles, you can run a command on or pass arguments to multiple files. For example, you could run the TYPE command on all files in a tree with the *.txt extension. Or, you could execute every batch file (*.bat) on the C:\ drive with the file name "Myinput.txt" as the first argument.
  
  
• With forfiles, you can do any of the following:
  
  
  • Select files by an absolute or a relative date using /d.
    
    
  • Build an archive tree of files using variables such as @fsize (file size) and @fdate (file date).
    
    
  • Differentiate files from directories using the @isdir variable.
    
    
  • Format output by including special characters in the command line and surrounding the characters with the hexadecimal code 0xHH.
    
    
• Forfiles works by implementing the recurse subdirectories flag on tools designed to process only a single file.
  
  

To list all of the batch files on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.bat /c"cmd /c echo @file is a batch file"

To list all of the directories on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /c"cmd /c if @isdir==true echo @file is a directory"

To list all of the files older than 100 days on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /dt-100 /c"cmd /c echo @file : date >= 100 days"

To list all of the files older than January 1, 1993 on drive C:, and then display "file is quite old!" for files with a date older than 01/01/1993, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /dt-01011993 /c"cmd /c echo @file is quite old!"

To list all of the extensions of all of files on drive C: in column format, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /c "cmd /c echo extension of @file is 0x09@ext0x09" With:

To list all of the batch files on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m *.bat /c "cmd /c echo @file is a batch file"

To list all of the directories on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m *.* /c "cmd /c if @isdir==true echo @file is a directory"

To list all of the files older than 100 days on drive C:, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m *.* /d t-100 /c "cmd /c echo @file : date >= 100 days"

To list all of the files older than January 1, 1993 on drive C:, and then display "file is quite old!" for files with a date older than 01/01/1993, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m *.* /d t-01011993 /c "cmd /c echo @file is quite old!"

To list all of the extensions of all of files on drive C: in column format, type:

forfiles /p c:\ /s /m*.* /c "cmd /c echo extension of @file is 0x09@ext0x09"