Delete files recursively with PowerShell

Question

I need to delete all files (recursively in all folders and subfolders) based on their last access time.

I was looking at Stack Overflow post Batch file to delete files older than N days that suggested this answer:

forfiles -p "C:\what\ever" -s -m *.* -d <number of days> -c "cmd /c del @path"

However, this deletes files based on last modified time, not last access time.

Also, is there a way to save the command in a script file so I can just doubleclick it to run?

Answer 1

Use Get-ChildItem -recurse to get all the files, you can then pipe them to the where-object commandlet to filter out the directories and use the LastAccessTime property to filter based on that attribute. Then you pipe the result to a foreach-object that executes the delete command.

It ends up looking like this. Note the use of Get-Date, to get all files updated since the start of the year, replace with your own date:

get-childitem C:\what\ever -recurse | where-object {-not $_.PSIsContainer -and ($_.LastAccessTime -gt (get-date "1/1/2012"))} | foreach-object { del $_ }

Or to use some common aliases to shorten everything:

dir C:\what\ever -recurse | ? {-not $_.PSIsContainer -and ($_.LastAccessTime -gt (get-date "1/1/2012"))} | % { del $_ }