how to delete

[Mohammad_Dos]

Hi,
I want delete all files and directories there is in c:\a
but I dont want delete this folder and just delete files and folders in it.
how?
(by one line. if it is possible)
thank u

[aGerman]

DEL deletes files, RD (or RMDIR) removes folders.

As one-liner.

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pushd "C:\a"&&(del /f /q /a *&(for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /ad /b') do rd /s /q "%%~a")&popd)

But normally I would write a block (for a better readability).

Code: Select all

pushd "C:\a" &&(
  del /f /q /a *
  for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /ad /b') do rd /s /q "%%~a"
  popd
)

Regards
aGerman

[Mohammad_Dos]

do u can explain that?
please teach "for" command in a new topic for us.
thank u

[ChickenSoup]

For is a loop.
See: FOR /?

"For /f" will parse each line of a file and will output the line as a single variable or variable set depending on the delimiters used.

So, the For loop will process each line of 'dir /ad /b'. If this was run against the C: drive, you would get an output something like this as the dir command:

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Documents and Settings
Program Files
RECYCLER
System Volume Information
WINDOWS

Your for loop would then process each line of the above output into whatever is after your 'do' statedment. In this case it would try to do the following.

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rd /s /q "Documents and Settings"
rd /s /q "Program Files"
rd /s /q "RECYCLER"
rd /s /q "System Volume Information"
rd /s /q "WINDOWS"